>That's been my experience, too. I was first licensed in the mid-60's
>and the cw bands were very busy, especially at night. You didn't even
>need a calibrated receiver to find the ham bands. 40 is still fairly
>active during the day on weekends, but 80 cw is really dead except
>for a few traffic nets, even at night.
Over the last 18 years I have spent a lot of time ragchewing on 40
meter CW in the 7.030 range where many of the QRQ CW gang
are lurking. Back even about 10 years ago, I could get on 7.030
+/- 5 kHz and call CQ at 35-40 WPM and get a response after a
couple of tries any time of the day or night. I used to stealth
operate in the middle of the night when I was in high school in
the early and mid 1980's and could always raise someone.
Nowadays, most of my operating is "prime time" weeknights - in
the 8 pm to 10 pm Eastern window. Often I will call CQ for
quite a while around 7.030 without receiving a response. Then
try 20 or 80 meters and much the same thing will happen. After
15 or 20 minutes of this I find myself drifting to SSB or the AM
shortwave bands....I'm on the radio a lot these days, just not
transmitting very much, it seems.
Scott Robbins, W4PA
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