All, I suspect there are a number of folks on the reflector who may not be aware of the fact that the six meter band becomes quite active this time of year. Sporadic-E season starts in the spring and lasts throughout the summer. The mechanisms that cause Sporadic-E are such that the 50MHz openings happen each year regardless of where we are in the 11 year sunspot cycle.
Single hop contacts out to 1300 miles are most common, but it's not unusual to work multi-hop distances in excess of 4000 miles. The long distance openings are thought to be caused by widespread Sporadic-E. The reason I thought this was worth mentioning is that I've watched many Es seasons come and go with little to no digital activity and I suspect that it's probably due to the misinformation being passed around about high sunspot numbers being the only reason to bother with six. If you're interested, check some of the cluster sites such as DX Summit for 50MHz openings throughout the day. Yesterdays openings to the Caribbean lasted for a couple of hours and the openings to many parts of the U.S. went on into the late evening. DX Summit 50MHz -- http://www.dxsummit.fi/CustomFilter.aspx?customCount=50&customRange=50 Sporadic-E is also responsible for the 28MHz openings you'll find this time of year so this may interest 10 meter buffs. It would be nice to see more digital activity on 50290. Tony -K2MO
