Some 80m Notes
Before I put up this random wire antenna, I had never gotten on 80m from my home QTH. I’d worked it on Field Day, but that, of course, doesn’t really give one a feel for the characteristics of the band. I’m finding that it has quite a different feel than, say, 40m. Here are some of my observations:
- There is more of a tendency to ragchew on 80m. I’ve had some good ragchews on 40m, but it seems to me that there are more of them on 80m than 40m. Guys just like to chat, I guess. I kind of like that.
- Operators tend to operate slower on 80m. I have no hard and fast statistics for this, but it seems as though the CW is generally slower on 80m than the other bands.
- It’s more useable later into the evening. Lately on 40m, it’s been going way long at night, and then gets quiet. On 80m, you can find guys to work at 10pm, 11pm, and even after midnight. Maybe all the guys who were operating earlier, QSYed to 80m.
All in all, I’m really liking 80m, and after I get my 40m dipole back up, I’m going to have to work on putting up a better 80m antenna.
