VHF PLUS
How do you know when there’s a band opening? This is a common question among newcomers to VHF / UHF DXing. There are multiple approaches, but we’ll take a look at three of them here: Listening, looking, and listening some more!
The easiest and probably most common approach is to set your radio on a particular band’s calling frequency1 and listen for a faraway station to pop in, either calling CQ or in QSO with another station. The two major drawbacks to this are 1) a station may be calling / talking on a different frequency and 2) if everybody’s listening and nobody’s transmitting, a great band opening can pass unnoticed.
The internet can also be a source of band-opening information, particularly from the Reverse Beacon Network2 (RBN) and WSPRnet, 3
