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What to listen to · Amateur radio
FT8 on 12 metres: 24915 kHz, a WARC band for sunny years
Between 15 and 10 m sits a quiet band that opens only when the sun is active: no contests, few stations, long daylight paths. FT8 on 24915 kHz tells you within minutes whether 12 m is awake.
What you hear
The FT8 chorus of the main article in its sparsest form. On 24915 kHz a quiet day shows an empty waterfall; a good day shows a dozen stripes from Africa, South America or Asia, hardly ever from next door, because the band skips over everything closer than a thousand kilometres.
Who transmits and why
Amateurs who check the band because nobody else does. 12 m was added at the 1979 conference together with 30 and 17 m, and like them it is kept free of contests, so a contact here is unhurried. It behaves like a slightly tamer 10 m: it needs high solar activity or sporadic E, and when it works, a few watts cross an ocean. Expeditions put a station here on good days, and FT8 is how most of the band's contacts are made.
When and where to listen
Daylight in the years around a solar maximum, from late morning to sunset, with autumn and spring the most reliable; in summer, sporadic E gives short, strong openings over 1000 to 2000 km. Nothing at night. Choose a receiver in the region you want to listen from; the dial is 24915 kHz, USB.
In ShackDeck
Station catalogue → Amateur radio → FT8 12 m. The program picks a public receiver with 24915 kHz, sets FT8 mode and decodes; the callsigns go to the On air list and the map every fifteen seconds. No receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed.