Local activity on the bands

KM4GZS

New member
I am curious as to how active some of the bands are locally. Mostly I am curious as to bands that require special or expensive setups which I and others don't currently have but may be interested in building setups if there is activity on them.

Earlier today at the Longhorn Steakhouse I asked about the 160 Meter band and was told its basically dead locally. I am also curious about how active 6 meters and 1.25 meters are. These 3 bands I haven't had a good way of monitoring but I do know that they are usually, but not always, local distance only except during specific ionospheric conditions. Also how is local 10 meters including FM 10 Meters? I do have the equipment to monitor 10 meters but I haven't monitored it here extensively for a long enough period of time.

As for things I have monitored and somewhat have an idea about locally, 80/75 Meters I have noticed is often active when I check on my shortwave receiver, at least the upper part of that band. Not entirely sure if all the traffic I have noticed there is local due to my shortwave receivers only having AM reception and thus SSB and other signal modulations not being able to be picked up intelligibly. Could be longer distance stuff due to it generally having more favorable propagation late at night which is also when I usually do most of my radio stuff.

I have also noticed 2 meters and 70 centimeters be sporadically active locally with regular nets mostly. Unfortunately my handheld isn't the best for picking up what could possibly be out here locally so I don't fully know. Its also probably the case that I am monitoring local traffic too late at night and at other, not great times, to really know.

KM4GZS
 
You’ll find that the VHF/UHF bands (2m, 70cm) are generally active around the net times. Look around on the club pages part of the forums and we’ve listed local repeater frequencies. Most clubs do have regular nets. I applaud you for listening on 6m and 10m as your technician permissions are actually quite broad (https://www.arrl.org/files/file/Regulatory/Band Chart/Hambands4_Color_17x11.pdf). You do have transmission privileges on 28.300 - 28.500 (10m), and of course you can always listen.

We’re going to be publishing details soon about our plans for Field Day (June 28-29) - a group of us plan on getting together and setting up a public exhibition of radios and antennas and you’re more than welcome to stop by and get on the air on the HF bands using the club call.
 

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