I've used 26.285 USB as a call frequency since 79, was buzzing in solar max in the early 80's, was off radio for solar max in 90's but I reappeared around the earlt 2000's solar max and some of my best contacts were on 26.285, very few nuggets there, 26.285 tends to open up when the madness on 27.555 starts, I've worked s.africa, s.america,n.america and all over europe on 26 mhz, but always from 26.285 and always on USB, Back in the eay 80's 27.555 was nothing, the international call channel then was ch4 high or 44 depending what radio you had, 27.455,
27.555 came later with Aldo and his nuggets in Alfa Tango, the elite, lmao. I'd be very surprised when 27.555 is full of nuggets if the decent ops still don't drop to 26.285, I was still making contacts there 3 years ago, I know my pal Tony in Tobago monitored it a hell of a lot as have spoke to him several times from there,
most European FM above 27.800 is UKFM stations running high power and big antennas, as despite 27.60125-27.99125 being a legal 4w FM band here no-one uses 4w, most have the capability to get back to you and the ability to qsy anywhere as are running either export sets with linears or hf sets with 100w, the Dutch and Germans have been regular visitors on UKFM since the day it started as its easily accessed with an export radio with FM and kc shift/coarse tune
I've heard Swiss,Belgian,Austrian and a few other countries turn up there too along with the odd stateside station. I've worked plenty on it,especially during summer sporadic E, same can be said about high end off FCC channels on FM too as they are legal in Europe, and very soon the UK will have legal AM/FM/SSB on FCC frequencies, burners are easy to buy here, every shop sells them, there is no crime in selling, buying or owning them, only crime in UK is using them on any frequency that isn't an amateur band, not that that stops anyone, same applies to export radios, openly on sale in all the shops as possession isn't a crime, using on unauthorised frequencies is, but like burners no-one bothers about that either.
45M is also used here, although not as prolifically as in the 80's, mostly inter European work, activity centres around 6.670 LSB and most contacts will be on LSB, although some will use USB too.
PMR is the latest craze here with radios from china that do the legal 8, .5w PMR channels plus another 8 above that, all around 446.000-446.200, although the radios used are generally chinese dual banders that cover 136-174 and 400 to either 470 or 520 mhz, most are 5w handhelds but anytone do two mobiles the AT 588 VHF at 60w and AT588 UHF at 40w, all are ctcss and 1750 toneburst capable so can open up 2m and 70 cm ham repeaters too, many hams use them as well for 2M,70CM and PMR as well as lugging into allsorts of other stuff like shop security, shipping etc that hasn't went digital tetra like the emergency services. But then many icom, Kenwood and Yaesu handy's and mobiles can be opened up to do it too
