Sometimes you just gotta try things, spin the dial and see what happens. You just never know really what paths are open unless you stop, listen and call cq. And even if you listen and do not hear something, it is often worth while having a call for a while just to see what eventuates.
I will do this every now and again and the results always seem to be worth it. So today I had a quick tune about 10m, i heard nothing, then i heard 1 weakish signal in Marshal Islands V93NS and i gave him a quick call and got in the log, so i found a vacant freq, spotted myself on the cluster and pushed the auto caller on the rig and sat back and waited to see if anything came of it.
And low and behold, it was not long before i worked a couple of JA stations on a band that was dead quiet. Moral of the story is, a dead band is often open to somewhere and unless someone calls CQ, others will never know you are listening. Self spotting on the cluster while forbidden in contests, is kind of acceptable when you are calling into a dead band, you might as well try and alert someone to your presence calling cq and hope they come on frequency to see if you can be heard.
Mostly, get out there and have a go. Less assumptions about what the band is, and more trying to make contacts regardless of the lack of traffic. 73.
