Out here in the middle of Iowa, 25 miles from the Boondocks, its very
hard to get excited about spending 4 hours in front of the radio to make
half a dozen contacts or fewer. It takes a full blown contest or a 1000
mile inversion opening to get more than that many stations on 2m in
working range. Fewer stations on 432 or 1296. Makes it hard to bother to
take the time to fix up broken radios or antennas... The last contests
I've listened to, I heard NO contacts on 432 or 1296 that weren't
scheduled from 2m, and unless 6m was open for sporadic E nearly all
contacts there seemed to have been scheduled on 2m. So when the 2m
antenna is broken, making contacts on the other bands can't happen, so
why bother...
There are many demands on evenings, including such things as work,
family, and community including such things as radio club meetings.
I suppose I shall have to build an EME station just to make contacts and
occasionally aim the antennas at the horizon to wake up the big cities
with minimal stations... I should include polarization diversity to work
the FM stations too...
The root problem is that it takes two stations to make a single contact,
and 200 stations for one to make 200 contacts and there aren't 200 in
working range... And most nights the last I bothered to listen, there
weren't more than two or three in working range with a radio making
noise.
Yes, I'm one of those with the radio quiet. Sleeping or dreaming gets
easily more interesting than listening to hiss, computer birdies, and
line noise...
73, Jerry, K0CQ
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