Today I went to Carter Bar which is a pass in the Cheviot Hills, the border between England and Scotland to meet a ham who purchased a radio from me. The weather wasn't great and it had a heavy dusting of snow.
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| Welcome sign! |
Carter Bar has two layby's which alot of tourists stop off to take pictures and enjoy the views from the 411m elevation it has.
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| Views towards the South after the fog.mist started to clear |
Once I handed over radio to the new owner and he drove off, I dug out my FT-817 and magmount as I thought on the off chance due to the weather people might be at home and want the WAB and locator square.
So I called CQ on the 2M FM calling frequency and straight away got a call from GM6CMQ who was 63miles away and pretty strong but I wasn't that strong considering I was using 5watts. We QSY'ed to 145.400MHz and had a chat. After we finished I called QRZ on there just incase anyone was waiting, nothing which I thought was strange so QSY'ed back to the calling frequency and called a further 4 times and didn't get a reply. I even went to the SSB calling frequency and tried plenty of calls again this ended with nothing.
Maybe that WAB/Locator has been worked heavily before?? I scanned around the whole 2M band and didn't hear one QSO. I know my antenna isn't great but I was able to work 60+miles so the system is working.
Are WAB, SOTA, POTA prearrange on forums nowdays, does no one have a radio monitoring the FM calling freqencies anymore
I'm starting to think what is the future of VHF/UHF bands well for FM, the amount of handhelds, mobile transceivers and VHF/UHF antennas that are sold by dealers, ebay and other sources what are people doing with it all as they aren't using them to talk on.
Guarantee, I put out a FT8 transmission out I would of worked more than I did on FM.
Yes, I agree that activity on ALL bands can look low, whereas FT8 can be busy. There is far less chatting these days as there are other ways to do this that are totally free. We can now have video chats across the planet for free using the internet. Those that remain are, in the main, interested in chasing DX or doing something exotic. In the next 20 years our hobby is going to change a great deal as people get older. 73s Roger G3XBM.
ReplyDeleteI can see OFCOM moving to a model that changes the Amateur Radio Service for ever in the UK. Basically we make OFCOM no money and within 20 years many amateurs will be well over 70. Maybe the Amateur Radio Service will become like CB and totally unregulated in the UK? Roger G3XBM
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