Hehe, two meters is basically dead in China, we often use UHF as the main frequency band, except for a few VHF DX games.. https://www.google.com/search?q=tra...i60l2j69i61.4045j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Well as I was sitting in church last night I realized that 2m fm has always been cliquish. 40 years ago, when there were no cell towers in my area, the amateur radio bands were the only game in town because it offered you mobile communications. I had a cousin up on the mountain that had a killer 6 meter station at his house because he was a union contractor and worked building the Homer City Power Plant and all the other power plants built around the Indiana County area - the whole way to Ebensburg PA. With his location, a big beam antenna and a good set up in his pick up truck, he could talk back and forth to and from work with his wife. That still isn't conducive to building a good amateur radio community - it was just personal communications, which was something you could not expect on 11 meters. When I was sitting in my truck hunting yesterday I listened to a conversation between a woman - new ham, and another gentleman from Indiana PA. The woman was fascinated by what they could do with their little radio and their base station set up. I don't know the class of her call sign because she gave it wrong and when i looked it up on qrz it did not exist. There are people that are new that does not know their own call sign. Then it got me to thinking - this poor woman really needed an Elmer! Think about it - before you drive a automobile you go and take a written or verbal exam, and once you can prove that you understand the rules of the road, the state gives you a permit to practice driving. You drive for a period of time with a experienced driver that you hope is a good driver and a safe driver and not one of these idiots that sits at a stop sign or even in a intersection when the light is green and refuses to turn because there is a car that they can see in the other direction - even if the other car has to stop for a stop sign or is sitting behind a red light - they refuse to turn or pull out. And this harks back to amateur radio. We have people that passed the multiple guess test but knows absolutely nothing about amateur radio, and yet they can operate on the same bands as you can. 2 repeaters in particular, all I have heard for the last month is one person giving two call signs and only wanting to talk to that one person. You know that it was set up on the telephone and it is not really going to be a ham radio conversation, just a cell phone conversation on the ham radio - because they are not hams. And someone mentioned about the LMRS and how two way radio has died other then the police and emergency dispatch. And most of the local hams I hear on the radio, when they are on the radio are trying to talk like the firemen. Rodger That! Oh QSL QSL They don't really know anything and they don't want to learn anything and they are just there because they got the license and they don't know what to do with it. And the SAD PART IS - that the government with their COVID scare has killed the amateur radio club. Instead of the hams sticking together and saying - well you know, I can't go to the club meeting, but I can talk on the radio with these guys and everyone else, they just shut their radios off and did other things. No Meetings, no hams! And the people elected to these buddy clubs are not hams, but just the most popular members of the club or the only members willing to do the job, which they do half assed or not at all. The club we started with a bunch of technicians, they are still technicians and not one of them has sent me a email inquiry since the club president died and left them all of his stuff, repeaters, radios, power supplies, antennas, equipment - FREE, and none of them knows what to do with it! AT least once a day I turn on my HF radio to 6 meters, sweep across the band looking for the beacons, then move on to 10m and listen to see if I can find some intelligence, then move on to 20m cw to see if I can find someone with a good fist to work. And I realize that most of these people that has a license shouldn't. That most of these people who has a technician class license was gifted the license by the FCC and the ARRL, because they have dumbed it down to the point where a 5 year old can pass the exam. That you should at least know how to call cq, know how to send your call sign in CW, know the alphabet and the numbers 1-9 That if you learned one letter a month, you could learn the whole alphabet in 26 weeks and could learn the numbers in one more week. Which means if after 6 months you don't know any cw that you never did apply yourself. I'm not saying that you have to be able to copy cw but at least if you learned how to send it you would be a more rounded licensed amateur. and it is all just like learning how to drive a car. If you don't apply yourself and if you don't try to learn how to drive a car, you aren't going to drive. You will walk, ride the bus, beg a ride off your family and friends. And that is what we are seeing today in amateur radio. People begging a free ride. People not wanting to learn how to operate, and people who operates poorly.. How can we expect them to act like hams when they don't know how to act like a ham and for the most part most of their local club members don't know how to act like a ham either. And I am not putting down the people that runs the ARRL, I am just saying that they have turned it into a business and that most of the people that works there doesn't even operate. They are in it for the money or the status symbol. It is hard, if not impossible to lead when you don't have anyone to lead. To me it is more like a empty liquor bottle. The bottle might look nice and it might have had some really good liquor in it at one time, but now it is empty. It is either time to refill the bottle or throw the bottle away. And if we throw it away, we are going to loose all of our bands to the cell phone people - just like the television broadcasters.
Good catch, looks like Sarasota Co. is in place of it. There's 68 counties in Florida, I must have messed the SVG up making it a transparent background PNG. The one on our website is correct. https://fasma.org/fasma-regions-and-suggested-ctcss-tones/
I think this line in your post really hits the nail on the head. I remember when I first got my licence in 1983. I went to the next club meeting with my new callsign. One of the old-timers said to me "now that you have your licence, it's time to learn about radio". Back then these old timers we're always willing to answer questions and help with any learning. Some-times even lending or giving a piece of equipment to help out. Antenna days were always popular as well, with many hands helping to put up an antenna or tower. It doesn't seem to happen any more. Now, as an old timer myself, I have offered help and advice to newcomers, only to be told they didn't need my help, or the offer was ignored altogether. Changing times I guess?? 73 es gud dx
I remember back several years when the FCC took half of the 220 band and sold it to UPS who never put it to use. Please correct me if I am mistaken. k2gk
Do you think the FCC needs amateur radio operators to conduct this survey at all? You don't think the FCC can't just plop an SDR around several major cities and record the entire two meter spectrum for an entire year and not fill up a hard drive. Just a thought.
And I remember when the FCC gave us 12m, 17m, 60m, 630m and 2200m. Maybe we are going to GAIN more frequencies at 2m. shrug. There is no evidence this survey is being made FOR the FCC nor for the purpose of taking spectrum away.
Around here, we knew such folks as "honeydew hams" - they got licensed to use the repeaters for personal communications. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they follow the rules. Cell phones have pretty much eliminated that source of new amateurs - see below. Did she "give it wrong" or did you not hear it correctly? Check out this post of yours: https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/call-sign-confusion.845242/#post-6409191 "When you get to be my age, c's and Z's and K's and A's all sounds [sic] the same." Maybe. Or maybe you didn't hear her call correctly. That's because a driver's license allows the licensee to operate a car or truck weighing up to several thousand pounds at speeds up to at least 70 mph, in all kinds of weather, on all public roads, bridges, tunnels, etc., in all 50 US states, possessions and territories, and in at least some foreign countries. A car or truck can be a lethal weapon causing death, injury and/or serious property damage to innocent people if the driver makes even a small mistake. If they passed the test, they know SOMETHING about Amateur Radio. They may not know what you think they should know, but as long as they follow FCC rules and regulations they're perfectly OK. They ARE hams. Just because they only talk to each other, or set up a QSO beforehand, does NOT mean "they are not hams". I know amateurs whose main interest in DX. They will listen, listen, listen and listen some more for DX. They'll check the DX forums here and elsewhere, and RBN, and other resources to know when the DX they want to work is on the air. When a new entity fires up, they'll do their best to work the new one - and then they go back into listening mode. Does that mean "they are not hams" because they only want to work DX? You mean that they don't do radio YOUR way. And of course YOUR way is the ONLY way. "COVID scare"? Over 1 million Americans have died of COVID-19 in the past 3 years. That's more than a "scare". At least some clubs kept going by having meetings on Zoom - the one I belong to did that with great success. And you're not going to help them? That's nice. Hold on there. How did "the ARRL" "dumb down the license"? ARRL doesn't make the rules - FCC does. The tests today's amateurs pass to get licensed are pretty much identical to the tests YOU passed a dozen years ago. The VEC system has existed for almost 40 years. The written tests have been multiple choice for almost 60 years. Young children have been earning their amateur licenses since forever. You try to talk like an old-timer, Jerry, but the reality is that you're pretty new. If you think that should be on the test, write questions and answers about it and submit them to the Question Pool Committee (QPC) for inclusion in the next revision. Why? The sending test for US amateur licenses went away over 45 years ago. It's gone and not coming back. The last Morse Code test for a US amateur license went away more than 15 years ago. It's gone and not coming back. Nope. WRONG. It's not like driving a car at all. No it isn't. Not at all. What we have today is what we've had since forever: people with varied interests who focus on the parts of Amateur Radio that interest THEM. CW operating interests some folks, (like me) and they focus on it. Others focus on other things. It's a BIG tent - so big nobody can do all of it. Who gets to decide what "act like a ham" really means? Nope. Completely wrong. Have YOU ever been to ARRL Hq? Do you know ANY of the people that work there, and how much they operate? Or are you just unhappy because they don't do what YOU want them to do? Which means what, exactly? What do you think SHOULD be done? I've been a ham since 1967, when I earned the Novice license at the age of 13. No Elmer except a few books and magazines. By 14 I was an Advanced, at 16 I was an Extra. I passed the old "secret" written tests and had to send and receive Morse Code at 5, 13, and 20 wpm to pass the code tests. Back then you had to have a General or Advanced for at least 2 years before they'd even let you TRY the Extra tests. The written tests back then were mostly technical and regulatory stuff. No tests on "how to call CQ" nor phonetics or stuff like that. The study guide for the Novice took up just two and a half pages of the License Manual, yet with a Novice I was on the air with a homebrew transmitter, making QSOs. I've seen all the changes, seen all sorts of things come and go - as an active, licensed radio amateur, not a bystander. Here's what has happened to VHF/UHF mobile operating: It used to be that when you were in a motor vehicle you were cut off from two-way communication to a very large extent. You could listen to broadcast radio, or play a tape (if your car was equipped), but two-way communications were limited to a few wealthy folks who had mobile telephones. Amateurs had been operating mobile since the 1930s, but a mobile amateur radio installation could be a bit of work due to the power required, antenna size, and equipment used. And the results could be....spotty. Issues like ignition QRN were big ones too. And then amateurs discovered channelized VHF/UHF FM, and repeaters. The land mobile service had been using such since the 1950s but it took until the late 1960s for amateurs to adopt it in large numbers. A 2 meter FM setup could be had for relatively little money, easily installed, and would give good coverage on the repeaters with low power and a small antenna. The same radio could be used at home or portable. The isolation of driving was gone - if you wanted it to be. And of course if something bad happened you could call for help. This state of affairs lasted for well over 25 years ((late 1960s into the 1990s)...but then came cell phones. At first cell phones were expensive, bulky and limited. But they soon got smaller and more affordable, and then almost everyone had one. Mobile communications were no longer anything special. But there's more... With cell phones came expectations that didn't exist with mobile radio. People began to EXPECT that everyone had their cellphone with them all the time, and that they would answer it - even when driving. Employers often required that employees have cellphones, and there were BIG problems if people ignored calls and texts. Isolation while driving has become a luxury. And since repeaters were mostly aimed at mobile operation, they have gotten VERY quiet.
This is exactly why I don't have a mobile installation in my car. The time in the car is time I can ignore communicating with other people. I absolutely LOVE driving to Spruce Knob in West Virginia. Why? Most of the drive is in the NRQZ. That phone is as good as useless. It's glorious. Put some music on...or not. I still keep my trusty Kenwood TH22AT in the car for trips like that. I'm not getting it out to chat while driving though.
An attack is something unfounded. The future systems committee and technology task force are no longer active, and in my opinion that is not good. Letting the league continue to opperate in the status quo fashion is certainly a more concerning behavior. Sitting in the corner being silent about things doesn't change anything. I commended them, because they are actaully doing something, and do concur it would be ideal if there was a larger organization like the League (or NFCC if that is still alive) conducting a country wide survey.
Charlotte County is misnamed on the map lots of 2mtr and 440 activity - the CARS system has both tied together
