I’ve been doing some testing on 6 meters as a possible beyond LOS comms for the Guerrilla fighter. On the days I have been testing the band shows as closed. I setup my home station to send a HB on JS8CALL every 10 minutes. I plug my XIEGU X6100 into my magnet mount antenna that is actually a 2/6 meter antenna. Then as I head to my location I can listen for the home station to send the HB.
The home location has a 6 meter antenna on a 20ft pole with the radio running 30 watts. The radio at the home station is an Icom 706MKII.
So the most recent test I did was while I was out cutting firewood. As the crow flies I was about 30 miles away but the drive to get up there was much further. It took about an hour and a half. So while I was in the low lands and canyons I could still here the home station sending a HB. I was actually quite surprised.
Once I got up on the Mt I tried making contact with the roof mount antenna. I did make contact once but then couldn’t get a reply from the home station again. The home station was coming in strong thou.
I setup a jungle antenna and sent a HB. The home station replied. I asked the station to give me and SNR? and I got that reply also. I sent a message to the home station that I was in location 1 and got its ACKNOWLEDGE response. Mission accomplished.
The video below was my start of testing 6 meters. I was 20 miles from the home station. I also was messing with some different antennas. I had interesting results.
I think the biggest problem with 6 meters is the lack of portable radios that do SSB. I know there are some but the selection is small. Also the lack of HT’s make it a bit of a problem.
As I pointed out in my post about HawkEye 360 is doesn’t monitor down to 50 MHZ so that is just another reason to put 6 meter radios into your comms plan.
Below is most the gear I was using for this testing. The PowerFilm solar panel is not the same. PowerFilm was making a 13 watt panel for Amazon a few years ago and thats the one I’m using. They don’t offer it anymore.
Wyoming Survival 
Good summary. I’ve yet to try 6 meters, either at the home unit or mobile. First I need to see if the FT-891 will do 6m. Thanks for all of the details as to what gear you used.
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I just checked and the FT-891 runs from 160-50 meter bands. So now if the outside temp ever drops below 100 heat index, I’ll drag the bag out for some testing.
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Let me know how it goes!
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Every time you do a comms post it reminds me of home much more I need to work on my comms !
What light is that on your top rail ? Looks interesting.
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Streamlight 69190 TLR-VIR
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Glad I’m not the only one who thinks 6M is a viable option.
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I had pretty good luck with 6m.
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