“Hi Nick,

Just read today’s mail and noted your comments re 6m. I agree, 6m can be one of the most frustrating pursuits – ever! Without exaggeration, a few kilometres here or there is all it needs to make the difference, and it’s not all down to the local topology either.

Many years ago, I had what is regarded as an ideal 6m QTH. High on a hill, overlooking Geelong and with a decent 6 element yagi on a 25′ boom all strung together with decent coax. On many occasions I sat and listened to a couple of locals no more than 10 or 15km away from me working DX that I just couldn’t hear. Half an hour later, the shoe was on the other foot. Yes, the emotional discomfort does indeed drive one nuts! And while I agree with both of your points regarding geographical location and the scarcity of really good openings, I think you overlooked perhaps the most important _third_ point and that is you need to be there. I’ve missed out on many openings because of a need to work during the daytime and it just isn’t possible to make appointments for 6m openings like one does with a dentist.

Just to reinforce this third point, I can offer the following 3 examples:

2023 was the Geelong Amateur Radio Club’s 75th anniversary. We had a big year planned, a special event callsign VI75G and a pretty decent shack setup, so we made it our business to air the callsign at every opportunity including the CQWPX contest.

Unfortunately, nature doesn’t always play ball fairly and the Sun was particularly active in the days leading up to the CQWPX contest. That just about shut us down on HF. We’d worked just about everything we could hear, which as it turns out, wasn’t much so we turned our attention to 6m. Just a few CQs on FT-8 on 50.313 resulted in this:

Finding a clear spot was near impossible so I moved to the secondary FT-8 frequency 50.323. That resulted with this:

At least there was some clear space. And while JA isn’t particularly rare for us in Geelong, there are plenty of countries right next to Japan and the challenge for us became weeding those out of the dog-pile we raised. That night we bagged China, Philippines, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Towards the end of 2023, I was at the clubrooms printing out some QSL labels while I had 6m running in the background. I was expecting some activity as I’d been following progress Solarham and SpaceWeatherLive quite closely when a few signals popped up on the screen. Understandably, I left the QSL business to focus on 6m for a while. That day I logged 9K2GS, 9K2OD, A65BP, A92AA and A92GE. Not a bad haul indeed!

Finally, way back in time, when I was licenced as VK3ZZX 2m DX was the thing. It was relatively easy to get some antenna gain and a little less easy to make some decent power but not impossible. Again, being there is what counted and this example clearly illustrates the latter.

To say 2m openings to VK0 are rare would be to understate things quite a bit but on the 11th November 1986 such an opening did indeed happen and I was among a hand full of VK3s worked who managed to work Sjoerd (Sojo) Jongens, VK0SJ on Macquarie Island.

And while this last example isn’t HF or 6m, it does reinforce my ‘third’ point, band openings notwithstanding, _being there_ is what matters. And I mean being there with a station that is ready and capable of doing what is needed to snare that QSO. You can own all the latest gear and gizmos, but if you don’t use them, you will miss out.

That said, I still look at the FT-8 screen while the ’emotional discomfort’ levels reach 20dB over S9 as I compare my blank screen with what VKSpotter is telling me! At least I’m there, watching, hoping thinking ‘one day I’ll move further north, maybe …”. Then again, that wouldn’t be near as challenging as doing it from down here, would it. And at this point, I’m reminded of a quote I once read, sadly, I can’t remember where…

“If all the DX you’re hearing is 5×9 then you’re not really hearing the DX.”

Cheers for now.

Bert, VK3TU”

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