Five Band WAC.
This one does present more of a challenge and a little determination to succeed. As the name indicates you make at least one contact in all six continents on five bands of your choice. In my pursuit of the award, I chose 80/40/20/15/10,
Again, 80/75 plus 40 is a little more of a challenge then the higher bands it can be done if you are willing to stay up at night a little longer, or get up in the morning at an early hour. For ease of understanding we refer to 75 meters as the phone band and the rest as the non voice modes.
Anyone who is serious about obtaining this award can start on 75 meters, there is a DX window from 3.790k KHz to 3.800 Khz. for those who work SSB and of course the lower 25 for we CW ops. Europe can be heard in this region quite often from about 10 PM local time, 0300Z till about 0100 local or 0600Z.
Later on during the evening you might hear a few and it is few stations from Africa, for many years on 75 I regularly worked a station in Morocco with a very good signal.On occasions I still copy stations from the Azores, Canary Islands, and Cape Verde in that DX window. Working 75 you can make use of Gray line Propagation, so what is that? 75 works well for DXing at nights, so in other parts of the world it may be just sunrise, or sunset, depending on what part of the world.
The gray line is when the sun is coming up say in Europe, or the middle east, it is around midnight on our side of the world. Signals will peak to very strong levels for a short time, then gone. Same thing happens in reverse if we are just in our sunrise and the sun is setting in another part of the world.
Interesting reading has been published on this subject and you might consult the ARRL for the publications, there is one good one by ON4UN. Working the gray line, I managed to confirm over a 100 countries on 75, some of my best ones were Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Heard Island, Israel, Jordan and Cyprus. I used nothing more then a folded Dipole at 70 feet, works well and proved its worth.
Forty follows somewhat the same pattern, in the early hours of the morning there are several stations on 7.130 kHz from the South Pacific. They are open for contacts, you can get their attention by waiting for a break in the conversation. For those of us using CW you can find lots of action in the lower 25 kHz. of the band. Rely upon cluster networks,but not upon W3LPL spots of numerous stations posted from China. Most of the time you will be chasing ghosts, if the spots are numerous by other hams, take a listen. Otherwise, do not waste you time listening for something no one else is hearing.
The higher bands are pretty easy to work all continents, as mentioned earlier the times vary in other parts of the country, but your chances are very good..
I would not select six as one of my five bands, from my area Africa and Oceania are non existent on six. I have worked Europe, and one station in Madera Island, plus several Japanese stations, nothing, zero, zip from Oceania. Until we have great propagation again, well I do not expect much on six until that time. Let’s hit the air and rack up some contacts. BTW you can select as bands any five band combination, it is up to you. You might want to use 17.12, plus 30 then 20 and 15. Or some other deviation, hey you might want to try 160 meters, I have copied stations from Europe quite well on that band. For now, good luck and good hunting.
