Wow! telling Les to give up the hobby is kind of terse.
One of the key problems many hams have is the HOA's. Especially in the east and
in california. The HOA situation is taking a toll on our activities (we should
try to refrain from using Hobbie as a group). The problem is it is very
difficult to gather the exact numbers.
A newbie ham is not going to take note of HOAs when balancing his options.
Chances are he came from a club full of emergency service types and 2 meter rag
chewers. I mean in my experience I have seen or heard of only a hand full of
clubs going beyond this. Now this reflector and the many clubs reflected of
the users are an exception, but for the most part all of these clubs are
regional. In fact it is the basic national floor for all VHF plus discusion.
There is also the fact that many of us are (ahem) "sun setting" hams and we may
be finding ourselves on the way to assisted living condos or smaller house with
our families gone and doing thier own things. This would make some of the VHF
stuff more attractive to some old time Hf'ers if they were not giving up their
antenna farms for a better quality of life, or what ever the issue is.
There is a lot of things to do on 440 and below daily as a vhfer. Sats, ssb,
meteor scatter. All of this I have done with Omni antennas and basic radios.
This brings me to the other issue, that being the ARRL should find a way to
make these options more exciting and rewarding in the same manner of the HF
bands. You see those of us that are or were restricted don't get much of a
bang for the buck up here, many of the people are quite technical and lack
people skills which results in bad e-mails and its harder to find an elmer to
help you out.
This is what the core group of VHF'ers need to figure out. That is to be more
inclusive and less exclusive as well as getting good attention on the VHF plus
activities.
k3uhf
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