Result from 6 months use of the 60 m band


The first 60 m permit I got from the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) was for the period January 23 to June 30 in 2013. The result from that period is shown here. I then got a new 6 months permit starting from October 2013.

First I did erect a "better" antenna than the G5RV antenna. The new higher positioned end-fed wire antenna with a 9:1 balun did not show up as a good performer so I stucked to the G5RV. The transceiver I used is an ICOM IC-746 together with a manual antenna tuner DAIWA CNW-419.

Below is my log showing QSOs and Skimmer receive stations reports in dB above noise. The distance is in kilometers and time is UTC.

Oct 18, 2013 - Feb 18, 2014
SM 60 m Permit Channels:  5.310-5.313   5.320-5.323   5.380.5.383   5.390-5.393 MHz
SM0FOB/2 in Boden KP05vs

Green = DX >2000 km   Blue = SM Stations










The result is according to the "book". Best result for DX is, as for the 80 and 40 m bands, early mornings and late evenings or during night. During daytime, when DX is dead, the propagation is still very good with low power and for distancies up to ca. 1,000 km. This propagation type is called NVIS, Near Vertical Incidence Skywave. My very low hanging G5RV wire antenna is a typical NVIS antenna. For DX work the best simplest antenna is a vertical. 

NVIS propagation is good for emergency communications when other networks are lost. If the biggest electricity power dam is busted in northern Sweden it will cause 25 % drop of all available electriciy power in Sweden, cities will be drowned and so on. All communications networks for telephony, mobiles, Internet etc. in 1/3 of the country will stop working for a very long time. But in this situation radio networks in the 5 MHz can play a vital role. That is why emergency communications often are mentioned in discussions for implementing a 5 MHz amateur radio band. Norway, our neighbour country, is one of the few who already has implemented a 5 MHz (5260-5410 kHz) amateur radio band. Norway has performed governmental led emergency training situations together with ham radio operators. 

But most countries, like Sweden, allows only restricted channelized use of the 5 MHz band. Finland has a strange restriction. They allow only voice traffic channels! Maybe it is because of the Russian neighbour? Russia allows no use for hams. The band is very useful for military traffic. On the 5 MHz band this type of traffic is often heard, even with telegraphy keys! Maybe the Swedish restriction is because of the need of interception? Recently it is learned that mobile phones and Internet are intercepted by big states. Maybe again using HF bands for i.e. one-way spy communications is the best. With very low power using digital modes it should be difficult to intercept HF. A receiver can be just a small SDR USB-dongle compared to a receiver many years ago. The Swedish top spy air force colonel Stig Wennerstrom used a Hallicrafter S-20R.



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