Put in digital cellular all the way south to Polk county in Fla, north to Virginia, (skip the Carolinas) west across NW Florida, then Al. Ms. La., Tennessee, and Ky. Hauled my HF rig and CW key the whole way. Did 2M mostly in New Orleans...
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is an Amateur Radio group doing the survey. This is the repeater coordinator in Florida. Do you think they are carrying water for the FCC here?
I am on 144.205 each morning and plenty of activity. New Jersey, New York, CT, MA and even VT and NH. Weak signal work on SSB is alive and well. We even get the Virginia guys on the band too.
There is activity but compared to twenty years ago it seems minimal. My local repeaters see intermittent action and just today on the highway I had a contact on .52 for about 30 miles. Been a long time before that.
Not like it was in the 80's and 90's here in the upper Midwest. Still plenty of repeaters, with good foot prints, just quiet. SSB is making a come back on the band, and is good to see.
I once told a story about the WPA Phone Traffic Net and how I was the only person that would handle traffic east of Indiana PA. The Pittsburgh guys thought that Western PA - means - Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is in the far corner of Western PA - which goes from Coudersport PA - near the NY Border to State College - and the college was purposely built so that it was a even distance from the four corners of the state, down through Huntington Pa to Bedford, and there were two guys that would check into the net to rag chew, but they really wouldn't take any traffic north or west of Bedford - such as Altoona or Johnstown or even Breezewood. Since phone calls are practically free, and most of the traffic involved - your amateur radio is about to expire, I took those messages and passed them myself. There were two guys from around Clarion that would take the traffic in their direction only - again, they were only there to hang out and make noise. My station - I can work North - 50 miles, South 65 miles, east 70 miles, and west at least 60 miles on 2 meters. I hear the nets - most are relegated to Sunday Night or Monday Night. The numbers of two meters nets has dwindled down to almost nothing. And as everyone else has said - the rest of the time there is nothing. Drive to Pittsburgh - Nothing other then the morning drive and the afternoon drive - Joe Blow talking to one of their regular cb radio buddies.. And the Funny thing IS - I had traffic multiple times for State College and the NARC officers - refused to take or pass the traffic. Oh they might check in on the Quarter Century Wireless Association net - 2m or 80m, but ask them to actually do something and you get refusals and no takers. So you have these people that claims to have a premier Amateur Radio Club, but when you try to get them to actually do something they hide and run away! One of the oldest clubs in the country is the BVARA - Beaver Valley Amateur Radio Association - think KDKA, it started out with mostly all engineers from the steel mills and the glass plants - trade and technical people. All these clubs wishes that they had more members, but none of these clubs promotes amateur radio in a positive light. Field Days involves going to the same park, putting up the same antennas, making 100 contacts, eating and going home. Club meeting - lunch at Eat And Park - in the middle of the day when all the younger people are at work. A repeater with its antenna's aimed north / south, so it only talks up and down the valley. The one time the band opened up and I was able to hit the .310 repeater, the club member asked me - what do you want? Like I was disturbing the peace because I was talking on their repeater and they only talk to each other and didn't want anyone else talking on their repeater... Yes - you do have the lurkers that has the frequency programmed in their police scanners, but no - they will not talk to you unless you are one of their cb radio buddies. So I can drive 70 miles to Franklin PA, hit 35 repeaters in the mobile, and not have one conversation in 6 hours of driving. When you get to Shippenville you can hear the repeaters down in Pittsburgh, but no one will talk to you. Get lost in downtown Pittsburgh in the middle of the day, throw out your call on any local repeater or .520 and all you will hear is dead air. I did the 144.205 many times, but after Stan's tower went down, it all went silent. People are not hams, they only want to talk if they hear someone talking. They only want to talk to the loudest stations. Have a little scratch on your signal and they will refuse to talk to you. Even if you tell them, I am 70 - 100 miles away, they don't want to hear it, they only want to talk to Billy Bob and Moe..
I understand. It is the same here in VK. Any organisation or individual could conduct the same thing. I guess my thinking was wouldn't it be better if the ARRL conducted a survey like this, not only of Florida, but all of the states? That way there would be a national picture that would be available for possible "band plan" recommendations and updates. Unfortunately, in VK, there are now two organisations vying for the the "position" of national organisation. I see this as having a negative impact on things here. I feel a single organisation supported by all (most) local hams is of greater benefit to the ham community. It just seems to be an erosion of support for the ARRL if the states takes these things on themselves. Unless of course, it is part of a greater plan for the whole country. It wouldn't be ideal if one state decided to use "X" on freq "Y" when everyone else is using freq "Z". I also noticed a lot of anti ARRL sentiment in some responses. It is the same in VK with the WIA. It seems somewhere along the line, some national organisations have dropped the ball and alienated a lot of their local hams. It is a shame, as it was those organisations that built amateur radio for us in the first place. The present is built on the past. Maybe today's leaders are more possessed of self-importance than subservience. Everyone, please don't hijack the thread to respond to this. What IS important is that someone is doing something positive.
A plethora of proprietary operating modes isn't helping. I can drive from Phoenix, Arizona to the Arizona/Utah border and never make a contact on 2m analog. There are repeaters covering almost the entire route, but no one is listening or cares to converse.
@W9CR I am happy to see this sort of thing. And happy to see part of your coordination bodies goals is education. And the survey. Here in Wisconsin, the coordination body has been limping along for a number of years now. Yearly renewals often get waived, etc. I've been saying for years with the lack of band use and how everything is no longer carrier acccess that lot of the coordination bodies relevance is mute. Maybe newer higher profile (evevation/power) digital coordinations should require that the system support more than one digital mode. (Steve N8GNJ makes a prediction about theEvolution of Amateur Radio Repeaters in his Zero Retries 0080 newsletter) With the advent of so many hotspot and garage repeaters I feel promoting Shared Non Protected pairs for this type of lower profile operation makes sense too. Ultimatly a lot of how we have the bands carved up is totally incompatable with anything other than narrow band FM. Personally I feel non linear modes like FM have reached the end of the road. I say this because nearly all of the commerical two way market has dried up. The only real thing left is public safety stuff. If you look back to when Phil Karn was new to Qualcomm and Spread Spectrum was being touted (early 90's .. think of that Spread Spectrum sourcebook) while looking back I wish this would have caught on and maybe his employer could have made ham radio another test bed for this technology when it was young.... the question is how are such wider modes compatible with how we have our bands carved up? I'd love to some group likely from Europe take advantage of an ARDC grant to put something totally different into production. I know that is a pretty big pipe dream. Just look at how modest of a design (follows the traditional FM carrier underlying modulation approach) M17 is. Yet here we are years later and no manufactured product. While I feel we need to get as many ham radio regulations off the books as possible for the sake of the future since it takes decades to undo them. Sometimes those things, are other softer regulations like when coordinators required PL on repeaters, send a clear message to existing manufacturers. That is one thing we desperatly need is a better communcations channel with manufacturers. I've recommeded recreating the Future Systems Committee to the Leauge, but it seems they are just content with the dismal status quo. Like VK3UA said, it would be nice if they were leading what your group is doing, but at least someone took the bull by the horns. It might be useful to other coordination bodies (like mine here in Wisconsin) if people outside Florida could see what kind of questions are on your survey. They could use this as a model for their own survey.
I hadn't heard of the Future Systems Committee , which now seems to be defunct. As things are today, big companies try to serve what they want with creating profit as their objective, rather than responding to users wants. A body keeping in touch with what is current and recommending these things to the major manufacturers would be a relevant. One thing is certain. New modes grow when commercial manufacturers include them in their equipment. Imagine if early manufacturers had stuck with AM and not built SSB in to their radios. From W9CR's post - - you may be able to request it from them through this.
It died just like the technology task force. It seems the league isn't interesting in steering anything. Someone once said their abbreviation stand for the Antique Radio Reenactment League. I am beginning to see they weren't just making a joke.
"Time out", with attacking the ARRL and lamenting the death of amateur radio (you *do* realize that it can be self-fulfilling, right?). According to their website, FASMA is the successor to the Florida Repeater Council. A Repeater Council's task is to coordinate repeaters. Along the way they often document other "typicical (in their region) spectrum usage". Cut 'em a break and let them gather their information. In the meantime, I hope to work you on the air.
