There's a decent 26-29 MHz band opening going on at the moment, and as I was cruising around with the '940 looking for interesting stuff to listen to, something struck me as a little odd:
Why have the freebanders deserted their old haunts and modes?
27.405-28.xx5 used to be the primary domain of the scofflaw DXer, and they could almost always be found on LSB. The so-called 'triple nickel' (27.555) is (or was, a point to which I'm getting) predominately USB...this by user agreement, if what I've heard and read is accurate.
Years ago, one could find all manner of activity taking place in that 600KHz slice of spectrum between the CB Class D allocation and the lower end of 10M. In addition to SSB voice, I've at times happened across packet, RTTY, CW and even SSTV communications. The 'nickel was often busy 24 hours a day - it was the frequency on which to DX. Ergo, a lot of entertainment could be had if one parked a receiver there...
Fast-forward to today. Big band opening; let's go find something to monitor. With the rig tuned to around 27.600, the SM-220 I have hooked to the '940 shows...zip, zero, nada in the way of activity. A quick scan of the range verifies this - nothing going on. Period.
Put the rig at 27.000 and start tuning downwards...it's an entirely different story. 26.000-27.000 is alive with a variety of conversations and round tables...truckers, south-of-the-border hobbyists...almost without exception using AM. There were a couple of SSB QSOs taking place but the AM crowd outnumbered them at least 50:1.
So when did the memo go out that anything above 27.4 is off limits? If I was contemplating out-of-band ops, downwards is the last direction I would consider - this given the number of military and CAP allocations in the range. Likewise, I wouldn't be playing around with high-power AM.
What gives?