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What to listen to · Amateur radio

SSB on 15 metres: 21250 kHz, daytime DX by voice

On 15 m a voice carries across oceans in daylight, with small antennas, whenever the sun allows. 21250 kHz sits in the voice segment, busy in the years around a solar maximum and silent in the quiet ones.

Frequency21250 kHz
ModeUSB

What you hear

Voices on the upper sideband, as in the main article, from further away and with less of a crowd. On 21250 kHz the nearby stations are missing, the band skips over them, so a European receiver hears Japan and the Middle East in the morning, Africa at midday, and the Caribbean, South America and North America from the afternoon into the evening. Signals are often loud and clean, since the band is quiet and the antennas small and high.

Who transmits and why

DX chasers and contesters, and anyone who likes an easy long-distance contact. The voice segment runs from about 21150 to 21450 kHz; expeditions favour the band on good days, and the big contests fill it from end to end. In the quiet years of the solar cycle the band opens only briefly, and the segment can be empty for weeks.

When and where to listen

Daylight, roughly from two hours after sunrise to sunset, in the active years of the solar cycle, with autumn and spring the most reliable seasons. Receivers near the coasts show the longest paths. The dial is 21250 kHz in USB; if it is quiet, step through the segment, and if the whole segment is quiet, the band is closed.

In ShackDeck

Station catalogue → Amateur radio → SSB 15 m. The program picks a public receiver covering 21250 kHz, tunes it and sets USB with the voice passband; a click on a signal in the waterfall puts the voice on pitch. No receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed.

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