The above is a video of my first QSO on the six metre (50 Mhz) band this season. I saw that there was some activity on the band on DX Sherlock so switched on the Icom IC-746 and spun the VFO and suddenly I could hear morse. There were two OH stations (Finland) on different frequencies. I called on this one and he came back to me. He was 569 here on my fixed dipole, which ain't bad at all. Last year my first QSO on 6 metres was on May 1st so perhaps this is a sign of things to come? Well, we can always hope! Below is a map from DX Sherlock showing activity on 6m, including my own QSO, at the time.
Some time before this, earlier in the evening, there were some strange band conditions. I heard EI4KF putting out a CQ but there was no audible tone. I listened as he worked a couple of G stations and they had no tone either. Whatever conditions were present meant the tones were not coming through. Indeed EI4KF was giving the G stations a "441" report indicating an absent tone. I never encountered that in my previous two seasons on 6m. Below is a short (and poor quality) video of EI4KF with the absent tone.
I should also clarify that I worked EI4KF before the OH6 station, so technically EI4KF was my first 6m QSO of the season, but OH6NG was my first "outside Ireland" QSO of the year!
