On 3/21/2026 7:01 AM, Mike Smith VE9AA via Topband wrote:
I spent decades working everything that moved on 6m cw and to a lesser
degree, ssb. Since ft has taken over 6m I almost never turn a 6m rig on.
But I digress.
I even went so far as to leave sites like on4kst chats and other logging
programs bubble along (for alarms) when I was sleeping and squelch and scan
the 6m rig. More than once I'd be awoken after midnight to work something
exotic while most others slept.
Hi Mike,
I was first active on 6M CW in 1957 from WV as W8FNI. Worked a lot of
AU, was there for the great solar maxima (was it '57?). Then from
Chicago, I remember E-skip openings when the band sounded like 40M.
After moving to NorCal in 2005, single and double-hop E-skip, worked
with a couple of 80M Yagis, broadside EU/VK and SA/JA w/100W. Then Yagis
at 120 ft with legal limit. Been there, got the tee-shirt.
Since JT65, there has been ZERO CW activity out here. My last CW QSO on
6M was a VE6 during a contest seven years ago, and it took 4 paper cards
with green stamps to get a card from his rare grid.
Meanwhile, noise levels in the civilized world have risen more than 10
dB, 20 dB in many places. Just as CW provides a 10 dB s/n advantage over
SSB, FT8 provides a 10 dB advantage over CW with great ops on both ends.
Ops on both ends are still using stations that they built, using their
knowledge of electronics, transmission lines, antennas, and radio, and
their study of propagation to make QSOs.
And 6M is VERY much like 160M with respect to propagation -- great
propagation is rare, happens rarely, often at unpredictable times, and
ya gotta be there when it happens. Serious ops have to LIVE on the band.
Topband peaks in the winter, and great openings occur one night out of a
couple of weeks. On 6M, in the six weeks either side of the summer
solstice when E-skip openings peak. It takes double-hop and even
triple-hop E-skip for you and me to work, and the gods align for these
openings VERY rarely, and for minutes. And on BOTH bands, for most ops,
we've got to be using FT8 to get over the noise.
I'm chasing a very difficult award, even more difficult because I live
so far from the center of the US, to work all the grids in the lower 48
US states, on 6M. I'm missing 9 out of 488, all with no hams, all
requiring double or triple-hop E-skip and the signal to noise advantage
of E-skip. Three are up along the Canadian border in ME, and VE stations
in those grids count. I worked one of them last summer, in an opening
that lasted 20 minutes. It takes a week-long expedition by a team loaded
for bear with big power and big antennas. At 84, I don't expect to live
long enough to finish.
I've primarily been a CW op of my 70 years in ham radio, but ham radio
is FAR more than CW. It's also about learning and using technology and
propagation, and learning and using new stuff. Radio started with Morse
and spark, then CW, then AM, then SSB, then nearly a dozen WSJT modes
that overcome noise and some that facilitate various tropospheric modes,
meteor scatter, and moon-bounce.
I'm old enough to remember the AM vs SSB wars. The one about FT8 and CW
is no different. I rarely work phone contests, have never worked an FT8
contest, but love CW and enjoy RTTY contesting. All using a station I
built with help from neighbors and my knowledge of propagation.
73, Jim K9YC
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