After HI and AK came into statehood, it made the 6M WAS orders of magnitude more difficult with less than a super station. WAS was achieveable with a good, decent 100W/3 el type station with luck and a few years. Now - especially as sunpot peaks are steadily going down on a long cycle of cycles, it is only a rare usually brief opening to either, and usually not much at all west of Mississippi. Without extraordinary luck the prize goes to bigger mega stations. I have been on 6m for about 5 years, with many hours on most days year round and have never heard them. One brief opening occured while I was sick or in hosp. and a local with a KW, a 7 el M2 beam at abt 60 ft on top of a hill got HI (barely). I do not say it is impossible as many have WAS now, but seldom does a good station in the east/center part of USA get it w/o the big guns. WAS was not meant to be that hard. Therefore I suggest the Lower 48 award for 6M. As a consolation prize maybe, as an intermediate plateau perhaps, but still something to be proud of -like the old time WAS. By the way, I do not have a poor 6M station: a K3 to PA and low noise GAASFET preamp, to M2 6M5X at 42 ft, fed by LMR400, all on a fairly high hill. My rig is seldom not monitoring 6M (pointed west), I watch DXWATCH reports all day/most of night (am retired) and often call AK and HI at best times just to see if...... NADA. What do you all say? Good idea? 73 Karl

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WA2KBZ Karl Schulte

that was meant to say EAST of Miss. OOOPS!

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WA2KBZ Karl Schulte