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What to listen to · Amateur radio
FT8 on 40 metres: 7074 kHz in the evening and at night
The 40 m FT8 frequency takes over when 20 m fades: regional by day, Europe-wide after sunset and intercontinental in the small hours. What to expect on 7074 kHz and how it differs from 20 m.
What you hear
The same fifteen-second chorus of warbling tones as on 20 m, described in the main article, only here the voices change with the clock. By day the decodes are stations within a few hundred kilometres; after sunset the whole continent appears, and around midnight and before dawn the stripes carry callsigns from across the ocean.
Who transmits and why
The same amateurs as on 20 m, many of them moving to 7074 kHz when their favourite band closes. 40 m is the band of evening operators: people home from work, with an hour before bed and a modest antenna that works well here.
When and where to listen
From late afternoon until sunrise. In winter the band opens early and stays long; in summer the nights are short and thunderstorms add crackle, but the window to North and South America around midnight UTC is still the best DX of the day. Receivers in Europe hear Europe; a receiver on the Atlantic coast shows the Americas first. The dial is 7074.0 kHz in USB, even though voice on this band uses the lower sideband: FT8 is always upper.
In ShackDeck
Station catalogue → Amateur radio → FT8 40 m. The program finds a public receiver with 7074 kHz, tunes it in FT8 mode and runs the decoder; the decodes come into the On air list and onto the map every fifteen seconds, and no receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed.