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Bands and Modes

This page is meant as a modern non-exhaustive high level reference of what kinds of propagation and activity you will typically find on the common amateur radio bands. It may be UK-centric.

Band	Daytime	Night-time	Comments	Traffic
160m	Ground wave (120km)	DX but antennas often compromised	Noisy with summer storms	Data modes, SSB and CW
80m	Ground wave / NVIS	DX	Lots of long-winded chat. Massively busy during contests.	Everything, lots of SSB and CW and data
60m	Ground wave / NVIS	DX and local	Channelised, shared with military, caution operating here	FT8, SSB. No contests.
40m	Often open worldwide	Often open worldwide	Bread and butter HF band. Massively busy during contests. Mind the upper limit, we have less than the US.	Everything, lots of SSB and CW and data
30m	Open worldwide	Generally closes after sunset	Very narrow HF band	Data/CW only, no voice allowed
20m	Open worldwide	Closes after sunset	Bread and butter HF band. Massively busy during contests.	Everything here. A bit of a zoo.
17m			“Polite 20m”. No contests.	SSB, CW, FT8
15m			Big wide allocation, not much traffic	SSB, CW, FT8
12m			No contests.	SSB, CW, FT8
10m	Generally closed but opens when the MUF gets up this high, then comes to life!	Generally closed, but try grey-line to Japan (AM), South America (PM)	Massive wide band, great for local experimentation, FM DX	All sorts, including more FM than the HF bands. New York 10m FM repeater from the UK anyone? Perfectly possible with good conditions.
6m	Normally no atmospheric prop	Normally no atmospheric prop	“The magic band”. Sporadic E propagation makes this band look like 20m for really short periods in the spring.	FT8, SSB, FM, repeaters!
4m	Normally no atmospheric prop	Normally no atmospheric prop	Pockets of activity around the country. Similar to 2m.	Mostly FM, but more SSB now the IC7300 exists.
2m	Normally no atmospheric prop	Normally no atmospheric prop	Pretty much as high as sporadic E propagation ever gets. Tropospheric enhancements can open 2m up as far as southern Europe sporadically.	FM simplex, FM repeaters, APRS, FT8, SSB, pockets of AX.25 packet. There's a TV section you can request an NoV for above 2m.
70cm	Normally no atmospheric prop	Normally no atmospheric prop	Shared with ISM / other users, some geographic restrictions on use, check your licence	FM repeaters, FM simplex, some amateur TV, lots of bleeps and bloops to decode
23cm (1.2GHz)	Normally no atmospheric prop	Normally no atmospheric prop	Is present on IC-9700	SSB, repeaters, beacons, ATV
13cm (2.4GHz)	Normally no atmospheric prop	Normally no atmospheric prop	Used as the uplink band for QO-100 geostationary satellite ops. Unfortunately not open to Foundation licence holders	ATV, SSB

Notes:

All bands are open all the time within line of sight. This is different from “ground wave”.
CW is Morse code
Simplex is radio-to-radio
NVIS is “near-vertical incidence skywave” - straight up, straight back down again. Only possible on low bands.
For SSB, 80m and 40m are LSB. The remainder are USB. This is the convention. Data modes are generally USB regardless of band.
There are two bands below 160m (2200m and 630m). These generally require highly loaded (compromised, lossy) antennas so lots of power in for hardly any power out.
There are multiple bands above 13cm (9cm, 6cm, 3cm (the only microwave band available to Foundation licence holders), then 24GHz, 47GHz, 76GHz, 122GHz, 134GHz, 248GHz, then a series of Terahertz bands from 275GHz to 3THz available by NoV application). This is highly specialised territory.
Both of those sets of bands are largely accessible using homebrew equipment only

Some interesting spot frequencies

Band	Frequency	What/why
20m	14.230	SSTV. 14.233 is digital SSTV too.
20m	14.074	20m FT8
30m	10.000	WWV, American time station
80m	3.76	WAB net
40m	7.16	WAB net
…	…	…