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On June 13th, I noticed on ON4KST that Europe was running North-America on 6M. I turned the yagi and started listening. To my surprise, I could hear several stations. I heard several stations on CW and SSB. I gave a few stations a call on SSB. Among them was VO1KVT in GN29. That was a new square for me. I very rarely hear VO1 here, so that was quite fun.

I went to CW and started calling. It wasn’t long until I got my first answer. After that, the callers continued for quite a while. I also got several new gridsquares, but no new states. I ended up with 53 contacts in CT, FL, GA, MA, ME, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, PA, SC and TX. While working USA, HI3TEJ called in. That is the only station I’ve worked from the Caribbean this year.

This was one of my best openings to North-America. Very often, the openings start very late in the evening for me, but this opening started around 14z. I could probably have worked many more stations, but I spent a lot of time listening around for new states as well.

If you look at the picture, the path and most of the calls worked, can be seen.

As I enjoy programming, I sometimes make small tools that may be useful to other people. Most of them have been hamradio related. I decided to make my own tool for extracting gridsquares and fields from ADIF-files and make files for use in DX Atlas.

DX Atlas has a nice map, and worked/confirmed gridsquares can be marked on a map. You need to upload your adif-file, choose band, and you will get a zip-file containing two files in return. Open these files in DX Atlas, and you will get a map like the one on the picture attached here.

To try out the tool, go to https://la8aja.com/gridmaker.

On June 12th, 6M opened again. S01WS was spotted in big parts of Europe. I have never heard them before, and I know several LA’s have worked them. I also missed them when several LA’s worked them on F2.

I started hearing bits and pieces on SSB, but I struggled with some intermittent noise on the frequency. Finally they came up enough to get a contact. That was #149 on 6M. A few hours later, they changed to CW, and I managed to work them on that mode too. Afterwards, I heard that they were using 10W and a dipole. No wonder I haven’t heard them before. The double-hop conditions must have been quite good today.

On June 5th, I noticed we had an ongoing aurora on 6M. I turned the yagi to the north and started listening on the band. I worked LA1NG in JP66 on SSB. He was very strong, and didn’t have the characteristic aurora on him. Instead it was more like auroral-e. LA4IX in Tromsø called me as well, but since it wasn’t my frequency, I lost him. The signals peaked at around 330 deg. This was quite unusual and the aurora was quite intense. I went to CW and started calling, and got a few calls from LA and SM. I also got a call from MM0BSM, and I turned the yagi a bit to around 300 degrees to peak his signal. When I finished with MM0BSM, I suddenly heard a VE station calling me. He had to repeat his call, and it turned out that it was VE1PZ on aurora. We quickly exchanged reports, and I called, hoping for more. Unfortunately, the opening went away after that.

VE1PZ heard me a little while after we worked, and I asked if he could record me. The recording can be heard below. VE1PZ said that the signal peaked at 350 degrees for him. They did have a good aurora at the same time. I have worked USA on aurora before, but that was way back in 2002 when we had F2. This was very fun, and openings like this is what makes 6M fun.

Soundclip:

LA8AJA 6M CW – aurora recorded by VE1PZ

This idea came into life after I read about MD0CCE plotting the time for all his contacts with USA on 6M. G0JHC wondered which tool he used. MD0CCE had done it manually. So I thought to myself that a tool like this is quite like my Distance Statplotter.

I modified my code, and here is my Timeplotter tool. You upload an ADIF-file, or a ZIP-file with an ADIF-file in it. You select which DXCC you want to see at which times you worked. And finally you select which band you want to plot. The intervalls are divided into 30 minutes. In the picture, you can see an example from my own log.