I spent a little time this morning evaluating the band conditions on 10m and 6m in preparation for our upcoming Field Day Operations this weekend. To try for an “apples to apples” test, I used the antennas here with FT8 at 10 W input power. Our field day setup will have 1/2 the number of elements as we have here but we will be running 100 W so I believe the is to be a reasonable test. The beam heading for my tests was 260 degrees – the same as we will be using for Field Day.

As you can see from the image above, 10m was open for a good portion of the USA at 9:30 am this morning local time.

I made quite a few QSOs on 10m including several to the western states.

The 6m Band was also wide open and I was able to make about 40 contacts this morning include several to California and Arizona.

The openings on 6m and 10m were most likely a result of E-skip propagation. You can see the current propagation conditions on these bands here.

Digital, CW, SSB, and 6m operators at Field Day take note – its important to take advantage of openings on 10m and 6m during Field Day. These bands were not only open for FT8 digital but I am sure they supported SSB and CW contacts as well.

Fred, AB1OC