Hi Billie,

Well, band plans are all pretty much by "gentlemans agreement" anyhow,
aside from the old CW/digital parts vs. the voice parts of the band which
are legislated by the FCC. You have the right frequency for FM, but that
will not be the most active frequency unless you have a lot of neighbors
who are doing the same thing you are. There are some repeaters on 6M,
but they're few and far between.

If you really want to hear some DX activity on 6M, my suggestion is to get
a radio that will do SSB. Mind you, the number of contacts is directly in
relationship to the season (late spring/early summer is prime-time for 6M).
So you're riding the "tail end" of this year's big band openings. You'll
witness
another flurry of activity in September. Its also no coincidence that a
large
number of contacts are made during special VHF contests. All this activity
centers around 50.125MHz for stateside, and 50.110MHz for DX.

FYI, those two frequencies are not for ragchewing. If you're overheard
carrying on a long conversation on either of those two frequencies, you'll
quickly get a bad reputation as a "lid" (and I'm sure you've heard that
derogatory term used before, right?). So if you make contact, please QSY
to another frequency as quickly as possible if you want to carry on a
conversation.
Also, some stations will throw out a CQ and tell you the frequency they're
listening to for you to go back to them, so although you'll hear them
call CQ
on 50.125MHz, they won't be listening for you to contact them there. You
have to pay attention to the frequency they give out on the air. In some
cases
you may need to learn how to work SPLIT, but in other cases, the station
will throw out a call, then quickly dial over to the announced frequency
and
be able to both transmit and listen there.

There are also digital modes used on 6M, and they have their own
frequencies
of interest, like WSJT, which is a sideband mode.

Not sure what rig you have, but if it doesn't do SSB, you're really
missing out on
a lot of contacts!

Oh, one last thing- while you will make a few contacts on a dipole, you
really
want a high-gain (5 elements or more) Yagi or quad and rotator to get
the most
enjoyment out of 6M SSB, and you want to get your antenna up as high as
affordable (50 or more feet, with 85+ feet being optimum). You'll make
contacts
with it lower, but you'll be missing a LOT more contacts that you won't
be able to
hear!

VHF/SSB is a whole 'nuther world!

73, -Web

Billie Erin Walsh wrote:
> I'm new to six. I was told that 52.525 is the call channel to listen to
> but hear through the grapevine that it's not a "national" thing. Also no
> "band plan" seems to give where to listen for SSB and such. Then I also
> hear through the grapevine that there is no real "Band Plan".
>
> SO, what frequencies does everyone use most???
>