SSB on 80 metres: 3700 kHz, evening round tables

What you hear

Voices on the lower sideband, as explained in the main article, and mostly the same voices every evening. 3700 kHz is in the middle of the 80 m voice segment, 3600 to 3800 kHz, the home of the round table: a group of regulars, often a club or old friends, who meet on a fixed frequency at a fixed hour, speak in a fixed order and talk about antennas, weather, health and the news. By day the band reaches a hundred or two kilometres; after dark the tables from all over Europe overlap every three kilohertz.

Who transmits and why

Licensed amateurs with an evening habit. 80 m needs a long antenna but no skill at chasing propagation: it works every night, so it became the band of regular company. Contests fill it on weekends, and the top of the segment, 3775 to 3800 kHz, is kept for intercontinental contacts.

When and where to listen

From an hour before sunset until the small hours, the round tables mostly between 17:00 and 21:00 local time; winter is best, summer static makes weak stations hard work. A receiver within a few hundred kilometres of the group works best. The dial is 3700 kHz in LSB.

In ShackDeck

Station catalogue → Amateur radio → SSB 80 m. The program picks a public receiver covering 3700 kHz, tunes it and sets LSB 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.