Hi Terry & Duane
Both of you guys brought up some very good points. Thanks for sharing.
Ron.
On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Duane - N9DG <n9dg@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- On Thu, 3/19/09, w8zn@comcast.net <w8zn@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > Bottom line is, there is some reason there is a decline in
> > VHF participation, and we need to understand why and try to
> > fix it.
>
> Here's is my take on why so few newly licensed ops venture into VHF weak
> signal today.
>
> Back around the mid 80's to early 90's the whole promotional focus of
> amateur radio shifted away from being something that people get into for the
> fun of the technical challenges of it to it being instead something to get
> into just for communicating. Those who are interested in "just
> communicating" are simply not as likely to discover or undertand VHF weak
> signal at all. They represent the countless numbers of newly licensed ops
> who came and went from the repeater scene within a year or less. This is
> still occuring today.
>
> The "old school" ops usually came up through the Novice ranks and then
> settled into VHF weak signal because it was challenging, the "challenging"
> aspects of it being the "fun", "easy" was(is) not fun for them. Building
> their Novice stations were fun challenges. Today all too often the task of
> putting a first station together is viewed as "burden" by so many of the new
> ops. This is really unfortunate.
>
> Another observation I've made is that 20+ years ago whenever there was some
> tropo that the FM/repeater ops would actively try to work distant repeaters
> or simplex. Today that is rare. Granted much of that is due to most
> repeaters now having CTCSS access on them, so it is now harder to do. But on
> the other hand it seems like far fewer new ops today even recognize tropo
> when it is occuring, and in fact are more likely view those far away signals
> as "annoyances" and not as "unusual" DX. This too is unfortunate.
>
> It really is amazing that today with it being so much easier and less
> expensive than it was back in the late 70s and early 80's to get onto VHF
> weak signal with all the DC-dyalight radios that are out there today that so
> few of those radios ever see any weak signal use at all. I really don't
> think it has anything to do with operating protocols, old or new, at all,
> but instead is mostly about the mindset of what many view amateur radio as
> being about today.
>
> Duane
> N9DG
>
>
>
>
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