I got my first really good short wave receiver in 1966.
It was a Halicrafter's SX100 and its upper limit was 34 MHZ but
it would do pretty well up to 37 MHZ due to rather poor image
rejection at the very high end.

	In 1966, the Sun was starting to wake up again after the
preceeding minimum so I remember a number of Winter days with
nothing but hiss and power line buzz above about 23 MHZ. One
could usually hear some broadcasters above 15 meters and that
was pretty much all.

	There were a few faint Sporadic E openings in which one
could hear the CB stations on eleven meters, but it was the fact
that you could always tell when ten was open to somewhere by
checking eleven that really burned in to my brain. Here it is 44
years later and I still do the same thing only the modern way. I
have three CB channels programmed in to an ICR75 receiver. One
is 27.025 which is CB Channel 6, 27.185 which is CB channel 19
and sideband channel 38 because a lot of CBers hang out there
and talk skip on sideband. Talking skip, by the way, is still
illegal in the United States for the CB service but if there is
even the slightest opening, you hear a bunch of them with their
made-up call signs and rather odd speech mannerisms but it sure
lets one know if ten meters should be open.

	CB Channel 6 is where a large number of AM stations with
really biiiiiiiiiig linears appear to create their own
ionosphere by brute force.

	Is talking skip illegal in Canada, also? When we have a
big band opening, I hear loads of canadian stations doing the
same things that their American brethren are doing here and I
suspect that it is probably just as illegal in Canada as it is
here.

	My wife even commented one time that what you hear on
the ham bands is generally smarter and more well behaved. I have
not played her some of the garbage that used to go on on twenty
meters and on 80 late at night but I have told her about it and
we both comment on what a waste of time it must be to get an
amateur license and then spend days just being a total jerk.

	When I decide to kick back and see what's on, eleven
meters is the first place I check and then I check ten if eleven
was hopping. Another really good place to check is the repeater
subband at the high end of ten. You would be amazed at times
what is there.

	Several years ago during early November, I discovered a
New York repeater which is part of a large system in New York
state. That's nothing special except I picked it up at 2:30 in
the morning here in Oklahoma. Reception was poor but the fact
one could hear them at all was interesting.

	If you want to see if 6 is open, it is still worth
checking the television channel frequencies between Channels 2
and 6. Canada is supposed to go digital next year but Mexico is
not scheduled to go digital until 2021 so we should hear lots of
Spanish on those channels for years to come.

	There are lots of neat ways to know if the bands are
open and you just never know when the higher bands may wake up
and let in the whole world.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group
colin McDonald writes:
> and yet there are still guys who will go on at great length about how
> terrible HF is and to not even bother getting on the HF bands when they're
> talking to new hams.