10M is strange.

[TNFrank]

Late this afternoon as the Band shifted I made a QSO with a guy in Japan....JAPAN!

At the same time I couldn't even hear Oregon or Texas.

10M has to be one of the craziest Bands on HF. 

[WRYZ926]

You missed it two years ago. 10 meters was wide open and you would get a pileup on you from Japanese stations if you called CQ in the afternoon.

You should try 6m SSB sometime. The can be crazy too. One minute the band will be totally dead and the next it's wide open.

The bands have actually been pretty good considering all of the solar flares lately.

[WRYS709]

15 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

You should try 6m SSB sometime. The can be crazy too. One minute the band will be totally dead and the next it's wide open  

I just received my 6 meter HT-style telescoping whip from Jeep in Thailand. 

What frequency on 6 meters SSB should I monitor?

[beerftw]

51 minutes ago, TNFrank said:

Late this afternoon as the Band shifted I made a QSO with a guy in Japan....JAPAN!

At the same time I couldn't even hear Oregon or Texas.

10M has to be one of the craziest Bands on HF. 

10 meter tends to be like that, same with it's brother 11m cb radio. It has to do with propogation and the different levels of the atmosphere and how they bounce signals. It is not much different than the skip cb users talk about, where one minute they can not hear more than 10 miles away, next they are talking to someone on the other side of the country.

[TNFrank]

I don't have anything right now that'll do 6M SSB but the QRP radio I'm getting is supposed to do 6M so maybe I'll check it out. After I get my General more of 10M will be open to me and I'll be able to do 12M and 15M with the QT80 so I'll play on them for POTA and DX.

[WRYZ926]

37 minutes ago, WRYS709 said:

I just received my 6 meter HT-style telescoping whip from Jeep in Thailand. 

What frequency on 6 meters SSB should I monitor?

The 6m SSB calling frequency is 50.125 MHz

The 6m SSB portion is 50.100 MHz to 50.300 MHz

[TNFrank]

The Radtel RT-900 HT does do 6M but only FM so it's not much use. I'll check it out with the QRP radio when I get it.

[WRYS709]

51 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

The 6m SSB calling frequency is 50.125 MHz

The 6m SSB portion is 50.100 MHz to 50.300 MHz

I do know that FT8 is 50.313 in the USA

[TNFrank]

Also, as far as me setting up an NVIS, it'll only work on close in stations if THEY are also running an NVIS set up. Otherwise their signal will still skip right over me. 

[Davichko5650]

18 hours ago, TNFrank said:

Late this afternoon as the Band shifted I made a QSO with a guy in Japan....JAPAN!

At the same time I couldn't even hear Oregon or Texas.

10M has to be one of the craziest Bands on HF. 

Check it out this weekend - 3 different QSO Parties on the air, VT, BC and my own state, MN.  Also a 10-10 contest going on, so should be a lot of traffic on the phone and cw band segments!  What's sometimes fun is when you can hear someone on both coasts, but they can't hear each other.

[Northcutt114]

23 hours ago, Davichko5650 said:

Check it out this weekend - 3 different QSO Parties on the air, VT, BC and my own state, MN.  Also a 10-10 contest going on, so should be a lot of traffic on the phone and cw band segments!  What's sometimes fun is when you can hear someone on both coasts, but they can't hear each other.

Holy cow was 20m on fire today. I tried to work the guy in VT but couldn't bust through the pile up. I couldn't find any empty space so instead of calling CQ for my activation, I hunted the guys that were already up and on the air. The waterfall on my G90 was yellow and red everywhere. I've never seen it that crowded.

 

[WRYS709]

I think there are 3 separate contests this weekend too. 

[TNFrank]

I made a QSO with the Minnesota group. Other than that I was too busy Hunting POTA Activations.  

[TNFrank]

Do you need a 10-10 number to reply to people in the contest and if so how do you get one. Also, is everyone able to responded to the QSO Parties or only certain groups?

[Davichko5650]

On 2/7/2026 at 11:14 PM, TNFrank said:

Do you need a 10-10 number to reply to people in the contest and if so how do you get one. Also, is everyone able to responded to the QSO Parties or only certain groups?

Sorry for the delay here as after the fact for the contest.  But no, you do not need a 10-10 number to work the 10-10 contests.  Basically, once you have 10 10-10 numbers from members in your log, you can submit it to ten-ten.org and get a 10-10 # to give out yourself.  It's a bit less popular these days compared to when I first got on 10m as a Tec+ back in '96, but still active. Daily net on 28.380 as I recall, but don't recall the time.

[Davichko5650]

On 2/7/2026 at 1:49 PM, TNFrank said:

I made a QSO with the Minnesota group. Other than that I was too busy Hunting POTA Activations.  

Worked a number of station down in AZ on 10 and 15. 10 for the 10-10 contest, 15m was just guys checking out propagation, no POTA guys.

[Davichko5650]

On 2/7/2026 at 1:21 PM, Northcutt114 said:

Holy cow was 20m on fire today. I tried to work the guy in VT but couldn't bust through the pile up. I couldn't find any empty space so instead of calling CQ for my activation, I hunted the guys that were already up and on the air. The waterfall on my G90 was yellow and red everywhere. I've never seen it that crowded.

 

I was mostly on 15 and 10 CW and Phone, but I did work W1NVT on 14225 USB for their QP when I was mobile dropping the wife off at Bingo. I was also checking out a new repeater that's up now in my area for distance, had a good 30+ mile radius.

[TNFrank]

It was very crowded yesterday. I did get a QSO from the B.C. and D.C. QSO Party folks in my log. Not much on POTA today yet, hopefully it'll come around in a bit.