I think the likely reason I have not been able to receive anything on 6m is that the receivers I have tried so far are not so good..
When 6 opens and there’s people present, you could receive most of it with a tin can and a piece of string.
The two have to happen simultaneously, which is what’s made websites like dxmaps so popular. Most of us don’t have time to sit around all day calling CQ, but the fanatics and retirees seem to, and they spot the openings, and then people pile in.
I think the neatest DX on 6 is aurora. When that happens, it’s truly magical. First time you hear it, you wonder why everyone is whispering. Being north of the equator, myself, you also find it fascinating that pointing the antenna north garners the loudest whispers.
Radio is amazing.
You’ll generally find the two requirements happen together more often in May and early June, because people are rigging up and testing things for ARRL June VHF.
Just the law of averages. Once people are interested and operating again, and since Sporadic E tends to be a summertime phenomenon for the most part, 6m will have openings and people will be there to hear them, into July and August.
As kids get ready to go back to school and people prep for winter, and all the usual fall holidays start, the band will open occasionally and you’ll only see a few die-hards making contacts on the online logs, etc.
It’s just applied demographics. This is the wrong time of year for the best propagation AND finding operators on air. 6 will surprise you with openings, if you leave it on quietly in the background for a number of weeks and make an effort to make a CQ call every time you walk into the shack.
I remember one deep winter evening, I asked a friend to help me test an audio issue across town. We chose 6 because we don’t hear each other on anything lower, shooting over the top of each other for the most part. Too far for ground wave.
We are chatting back and forth across Denver for a few minutes about the audio issue, when a station in Virginia breaks in and we talked to him for over an hour. Huge opening, nobody on.
Beacons can also be super-helpful if you’re trying to do things the old fashioned way instead of using modern internet and computer tools to alert you to band openings. Tuning around for beacons you know you normally can’t hear, and there they are.