10 meter SSB in New England
- Thread starter W1JOP
- Start date
ind224
Member
Trying has MUCH more worth than not trying. Plus you'll come back and tell us how it went, so good for us as well. I have no ticket; when I CB SSB DX east coast is rocking. Are you looking for locals / ragchew?
10 meters is a long haul band. It's not best suited for chatting around locally. From New England, expect to be working Washington, California, Arizona and Texas. When 10 really opens, then you'll be getting in to Europe, South America, Oceania and Asia.
10 meter antennas don't have to be elaborate. A dipole is just a touch over 16 feet.. A quarter wave is only a little over 8. There are plans on the net and vids on YouTube showing you how to construct them. With 80 Watts and a 1/4 or 1/2 wave antenna above the roof you should do well.
10 is kind of in the doldrums right now. But we are still near the peak of a sunspot cycle and conditions should pick up come this fall.
10 meter antennas don't have to be elaborate. A dipole is just a touch over 16 feet.. A quarter wave is only a little over 8. There are plans on the net and vids on YouTube showing you how to construct them. With 80 Watts and a 1/4 or 1/2 wave antenna above the roof you should do well.
10 is kind of in the doldrums right now. But we are still near the peak of a sunspot cycle and conditions should pick up come this fall.
In my area we have been using 10 meters for local ragchew and a weekly net for over a decade. Most everyone is within 25 miles from my location and many use vertical antennas so mobiles can get in on the action…and to keep the polarization friendly. That last part is key for our proximity to each other, but horizontal antennas and or inverted V dipoles work to some degree.
Antron 99 and Imax2000 used to be inexpensive, so those are what many use as a vertical. I often used an Imax2k for DX and made a contact on the other side of the planet in Madagascar. During the summer we might get stations from Australia and New Zealand here in California.
Antron 99 and Imax2000 used to be inexpensive, so those are what many use as a vertical. I often used an Imax2k for DX and made a contact on the other side of the planet in Madagascar. During the summer we might get stations from Australia and New Zealand here in California.
Same in my area. There's a regular group on 28.420 MHz USB.
Same in my area in the St. Louis area.
Tell that to the CB folks 1 MHz lower who use the band to chat locally all the time.
That's true
I guess I got caught up in my own frame of reference.. Nobody where I am uses 10 for local chatting so I never thought of it.. (Lots of chatting on 80 here, but no 10).
I don't disagree. It's pretty sparse here too, and I really don't understand it. We had a local group back in the late 90s that used 10m all the time. Now it seems all the local stuff has moved to 40m and 80m.That's true
On Saturday mornings at 10:30 (Central Time) we have an informal roundtable kind of net that our local ham club, the North Shore Radio Club (Chicago area), started a few years ago. It’s on 28.355 and we are often joined by people from other parts of the country and even DX on occasion. It has become quite popular.
