I’m a fairly new ham, I got my technician ticket back in November.  So far I’ve only been on 2 meters which I throughly enjoy the rag chew.  Here lately I’ve been looking into 6 meters which looks great, except for the fact that everything I read about it seems to say every time the band opens up it’s just all about making contacts/contesting.  I have absolutely no interest in trying to make as many contacts as possible. I’m looking for more of a rag chew on 6 meters so before i go buy/make a 6 meter antenna, is it even worth my time?

The only time I've used 6m is to kerchunk a repeater when I was nearby. Never had a QSO, never heard anyone.

That said, your mileage may vary. I've heard it can be a fun band. I just never hear anything there...and my low pass filter cuts it off (HF/6M on one output, and it's a pain to take the filter out of line)....so I rarely bother anymore.

It depends where you live. Some areas are very active with high power stations. Other areas ... nada.

Do you have a 6m radio? You didn't say.

I have tried 6m once-a while back.  There is a distant, yet very high repeater for 6m so I constructed a beam with 2 6m Hamsticks and could break squelch but not really utilize the machine (this was with my Wouxun 2m/6m HT ).

Recently, I bought my first all band radio (IC7100) and through an earlier trade have a nice fiberglass 6m vertical laying around.

I'm almost in the same boat...is it worth the cost of RG8X coax and another mount to put the 6m aerial in service?

I don't have a lot of 6 meter experience, but I have made.................I don't know, maybe 50 to 100 contacts on six meters.
All have been on either CW or SSB and as far as I know, they were all made during Sporadic E openings and all the contacts were more of a "contest" type nature (as you put it). We exchanged signal reports and grid squares. In checking my Log Book of the world account, I have nine states confirmed on six meters.

I have no experience using the 6 meter band for local ragchews or with using six meter repeaters on FM. I suppose, as has been mentioned, any such activity would depend on whether or not there is any local activity.

Six meters is a very interesting band. You can certainly work people casually, but if you put some research (and put up a decent antenna) into it you will find out what makes it interesting: the various modes of propagation. Sporadic E, Meteor Scatter, Auroral propagation, and it's possible during a really good sunspot cycle peak to work people with F-Layer propagation. In addition, you can work moon bounce on six meters.

Six meters is called "The Magic Band". And for good reason.

Something that I have discovered is that using an actual six meter antenna makes a huge difference (big shock, I know). I have worked six meters using three different antennas: my HF wire antenna tuned with an antenna tuner; my antennas have been something in the 80 meter length, tuned for six meters with a tuner. I have worked quite a bit of six meters using a screwdriver type antenna mobile. And finally a Par End-Fedz six meter dipole. I used to have a ham that lived very close to me who had an actual six meter antenna; a small beam. Like three elements just on a pole in his yard (no tower). We have been on two meters simplex, and he alerted me to a six meter opening. He was bascially spotting for me as I tried to work or hear the stations he was spotting for me while I was using my HF wire antenna. Even with his little six meter beam he was hearing all kinds of stuff that I couldn't even hear; much less work. I was able to work some of the stronger stations, but again, he was hearing and working all kinds of stuff that I didn't hear.

There has also been a few articles in QST within the last six months about working six meters via meteor scatter and according to these articles, they are working stations every day of the year. Again, according to these articles; six meters is "open" every day. Again, most of the propagation people use on six meters is not directly related to sun spots and F layer propagation (as I understand it). So, just because the higher HF bands (10 meters, 12 meters) arn't "open" because of the point we are in the sun spot cycle, this doesn't mean that six meters isn't "open".
Which peaked my interest.

Based on my very limited experience, I would say that if all you want to do is ragchew with people, six meters would not be worth it to you to put up an antenna. You can do that on 2 meters FM. However, if you want to learn something new, try something new, experiement......................the six meter band is a good place to do that. That being said, six meter antennas are fairly small in size. And it is certainly easily possible to put up a six meter antenna temporarily when there are six meter band openings. I did this for several years: when I saw people reporting six meter band openings, I went outside and strung that Par End Fedz six meter dipole from my house to my pickup truck sitting in the driveway, and ran the coax in the front door of the house. Same would be true of that small six meter beam my buddy had. When the band was open for sporadic-E, he simply went out and put up the pole in his yard with the beam and he ran the feedline into the house through a sliding glass door in the basement. He rotated the antenna by hand.
But, if you don't want to chase states/countries/ grid squares................. then again, I probably wouldn't do it.

There's a 6m band? I thought everything stopped at 10m.

The nature of VHF "weak signal" operation is somewhat different than either HF or VHF FM.

Band openings on 6 meters are pseudo-random as to when they happen and to where you get propagation, that's why it's called "Sporadic". The nature of band openings doesn't lend itself to everyday ragchewing. You might have an opening that lasts 5 minutes, or 5 hours. You might certainly find someone to ragchew with, but that's not something that will happen consistently or even frequently.

There is some ragchewing via local "groundwave", but 2 meter SSB is better for that so the 6 meter activity is more limited.

In some places of the country there is some activity on 6 meter FM simplex, which people use for local chit chat with the occasional band opening bringing in distant stations.

Sporadic E, meteor bounce, and some auroral propagation on 6 can be fun. but getting your General Class Licnese will open up all sorts of good worldwide stuff. QST's "World Above 50 MHz" section will fill you in on the details.

Solar Cycle #24 is on the downhill side, so most HF activity will be below 15 MHz for the next several years. 20, 40, and 80 Meters have quite a bit of rag-chewing going on when they're not overrun by contesters.

I don't have enough time left in my life to make any QSO's on 6 meters.

2 meters will do everything 6 m will, and better.  As far as HF and going long, even
10 meters is iffy at best.  The popularity in 10 meters was Techs could operate
phone there.  Even that has lost out to 2 meters.

As a SWL I had tried listening on 6 m for many hours... nothing but static.  Zip,
Nada, Zilch, etc.

I have nothing good to say about 6 m.

I doubt you will find many people on 6 meters willing to ragchew for a long time. It's NOT a very popular band.
80 meters is probably the number one band for ragchewing. There are lots of little "groups" on the band who talk just about everything.
2 meters FM is another popular band but activity varies by location. It's nearly dead in some areas but very active in others. Many chat groups hang around simplex frequencies.
Obviously you will always find people to talk to in most HF bands. Currently we are near the bottom of the solar cycle and the band choice is limited to 160, 80, 40 and 20 meters. A simple, inexpensive radio like an FT-450 or IC-718 connected to a simple antenna like G5RV or a "fan" dipole, will get you in the air without having to spend a fortune.

Lots of people who have only used HF antennas to try to get on 6 meters have that opinion. Because VHF is not as forgiving of the antenna hijinks that are commonplace on amateur HF. Indeed it can be absolutely dead as a doornail. But on a hot contest weekend it can also sound like a 20 meter contest weekend if you have any kind of reasonable antenna. Any HF antenna used with a tuner is NOT a reasonable antenna.

6 meters does not have consistent propagation like HF bands, but it certainly has propagation far beyond what 2 meters does on a frequent basis. 2 meters does have better local tropo.

If your experience on 6 meters is confined to several hours, then you don't know what it can do.  Then again, some just do not have the inclination or patience to deal with the "magic band", that's the beauty of amateur radio, there are lots of different opportunities.

6 is fun when it's open.

it used to be one of my favorite bands

6 meters isn't worth it at all really at this point. Maybe in another decade.

I wilk tell you that it is not open much, or that I am not home to enjoy it.   (Live in DFW), but it is flat Frickin amazing when it opens.  Noise floor is like your talking on a repeater.  Strange beast it is...  I had a pipeline to chicago area one day and was talking to people ssb, I asked them to drop power and all went below 5w and were readable..   I have a multiband vertical and it still was amazing..   This site is real handy to follow 6m openings, you can setup notifications for a band opening..  Seems to favor north-east IMO..  REAL TIME MAPS

Good luck

Prosise

I got in my vehicle in the parking lot leaving the Dayton Hamvention one year, and threw out my callsign on 6m FM simplex, expecting someone else at the hamvention would be on the air. 2m simplex is pretty busy so I thought I'd try 6. Someone came right back to me with perfect signal. I asked him about the hamvention, he said he'd have loved to have been there... he was in Louisiana. Had a nice chat for 20 minutes or so as I was departing Dayton. 6m in E-skip season is a box of chocolates, you just never know what you'll get next.

I use it for backwoods comms. And yup once in a while ive worked "dx" on 6m FM...

99% of the time 6 meters is completely worthless unless you have some local friends.

But that 1% of the time, it's (cliche, to be sure) magic. Open to the world on arbitrary power.

Even when propogation isn't playing nicely, you still have meteor scatter and other weak signal modes if you have patience and a half decent antenna.

I put a 6 meter dipole in my attack months ago

I have yet to hear anything

I think it would be great for local comms with friends , nobody is ever on it and you can make small yagi's to reach the more distant people in the group.

6 FM can have pretty decent range, and it's typically quiet.

It's great for local FM

I love 6m when it's open, but that the snag, it's rarely open. Last big opening I posted here back in July 2014 lasted all day. Several of us worked ops all over US & some DX. There was a dude in AK booming here in WV that afternoon on FM voice. I listened to several east coast folks work him within a few minutes.

I can tune 6m on my 80m doublet now so I can at least play if it ever opens. I have a small 6m beam that is collecting dust in garage storage.

** Here is a link to that archived thread.  6 meter opening As you can see it was great that day.   **

There are lots of online resources to monitor what is going on, on six meters.
One such source is: PSK Reporter but there are many others.
In addition, there are six meter beacons that you can monitor.

To say that six meters is never open, or it is seldom open.............is simply not true.

I just looked at that link I posted above, for today, for the last 15 minutes. Somebody in San Francisco worked a guy in Wisconsin and another guy in  Michigan on FT8 within the last 15 minutes (of me making this post). Those two contacts were not made on ground wave. In other words, the six meter band was open today.

A friend had an interesting experience with the 6-meter band. He lives in Northern Arizona, and was trying to set up contact with a someone who lived only 12 or 15 miles distant, but they had a significant ridge of mountain between them. They tried 2 meters, 440 and HF - all without success - but when they gave it a last ditch effort with 6 meters, they had bomb-proof comms. Some sort of weird knife edge propagation which (last I heard) has remained reliable for them where no other band would function. Strange!

Troposcatter at 50 MHz

I made contact this morning on 6 meter on the national calling station He was over in the s w corner of MS. Not much of a signal but great audio.

As I have posted many times, trying to use 6 meters on an HF antenna with a tuner is a recipe for failure. The signal pattern is so wonky that you miss more signals than you find.  A simple 6 meter specific dipole will be far more satisfactory.

6 meter FM can have openings for sure, but weak signal modes (CW, SSB, FT8, etc) will be open far more than will FM.

I've made the point before with regards to "alternative" VHF bands, that some propagation paths work better on some bands than others, and it's worth getting experience with the different bands. This is an example of why.

This thread has inspired me to do an experiment.
Because, why not ?
Others should join in.

First of all, I don't have a six meter antenna. I am going to be using an end fed HF antenna that is like 120 to 130 feet long; tuned with an antenna tuner. Yes, I know this sucks as a six meter antenna. I posted that long ago in this thread. However, that is what I have to work with right now.

Anyway, I have fired up the radio, tuned the antenna, and I have the WSJT-X software running on FT8 mode.
I am just going to leave this sitting here running at least until tomorrow and I am going to see if I decode anything.
If I actually do decode something, I will report back.

To repeat: I just clicked on PSK Reporter and people in the east coast, west coast and Midwest are making contacts on six meters as I type this.

Yup, 6m can work well in some situations like that, and in general if you can get a decent antenna for the band up it works pretty well for local comms. I use 6m in the mountains with much better success than 2m in general.

Just made my first 6m contact on FT8.

Just one state over, but hey. First time I did anything with it.

I was surprised I could tune my 80/40/20 dipole to 6 meters.

The larger the multiple of wavelengths the easier it will be to tune IME, hell it might even work fine for 2 or 440.

As I was enjoying my first cup of coffee this morning, I was flipping through the May 2017 issue of CQ Magazine. In the VHF Plus column, the author K8ZR starts off with an interesting statement:

"Last month, a brief detour was taken from the discussion of station improvements and the consequences of feedline choice on the receive path to discuss WSJT-X and it's immediate impact, particularly on 50 mhz. Before returning to the topic of station improvements, a brief update on my experiences with WSJT-X MSK144 on the Magic Band: For a period of 60 consecutive days starting in late January, over 250 QSOs were made via MSK144, in 20 states with 52 different stations in almost as many grids with over 100 unique callsigns decoded. The average length of time to complete a QSO was 5 minutes, with 10 QSOs taking less tha two minutes to complete. Clearly, the Magic Band is open every day, provided that the right mode is used given the conditions - in this case meteor scatter and MSK144. "

I've been meaning to try some of the various meteor scatter/sporadic E type modes... I just never really thought many people were doing it, but your post suggests otherwise.

Real Time 6 Meter activity in the US.

I made several SSB voice QSO’s yesterday on 6 meter between my QTH in Oregon and New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California by way of Meteor Scatter.  It was the first time I have ever made a 6 meter contact. In fact it’s the first time I have ever even heard any activity on 6 meter.  What a thrill that was!   Then when voice faded out, I switched to FT8 and made several more 6 meter contacts.

It's essentially impossible to make voice contacts via meteor scatter, as meteor pings strong enough to support SSB only last a couple seconds.

The distance you are talking about is just about right for single-hop E skip though.

That makes sense. The band would be completely dead for several minutes at a time. Then like someone flipped a switch, there was huge pile ups of strong signals for about 40 seconds then the switch was flipped back and total silence again for several minutes.  I knew there was a meteor shower going on, I just figured that’s what I was using.

I hear FT-8 a lot. Not so much ssb. I usually set vfo at 50.125 and listen.

I built this the other day to play on six a little .

That's all you need. It will be deaf off the ends of the dipole, so some method of rotation is helpful even if just Armstrong. Best takeoff angle for E skip is about 25~30 feet elevation if you can get that high, but you will still hear stuff with it lower.

I kept saying I would going to put up a second dipole at 90 degrees to the first to have switchable directions, but came up with another idea for an omni antenna and haven't manged to get either one built

I am currently listening on 6 meters FT-8.
With a ghetto station set-up.

I am using a Par End-Fedz, 6 meter dipole. I tied a string on the feedpoint end of the antenna, then went upstairs to a second floor bedroom window, threw the antenna out the window, and closed the window on the string thus supporting one end of the antenna. I then tied a string on the other end of the antenna, tied that string on a 12" Cresent wrench and tossed it up threw a big pine tree, pulled the line through thus supporting the other end of the antenna. The dipole is now horizontal at about 20 or 25 feet.
I am running my KX3 at 5 watts through an Expert 2K-FA amplifier to give me 104 watts output (this dipole is rated at 100 watts, I don't want to get carried away with the power).

I have been doing this for about a half hour and have decoded two signals. One from Indiana, and one from about half way across the state from me in Ohio (he was calling W1AW). I haven't been able to work anybody yet, but it is just a matter of time. I have used this same set-up last year to work a bunch of SSB and CW stations. I have also used this same antenna at a lower height to work a bunch of stations when I lived in Nevada.

Checking the on-line maps it doesn't look like the band is very good at the moment, but I am thinking this will work fairly decent and give me a few contacts on 6 meters.

Hawk_308  that antenna looks nice. It should work fairly well. Not as good as a big beam at 100 feet, but it will work fairly well.

Thanks gamma and 444 ,  I built it just to have something on 6 meters after looking through my antenna building scrap pile . They have a 6 meter net on 50.400 9 pm on monday nights about 40 miles north of me so I figured I'd give it a try.