There are also a large number of licensees who never operate on ham bands,
don't think of themselves as hams, but have licenses because they have a boat
that goes off shore. There are a great many with the same address, usually the
local yacht club. They use winlink and repeaters some.
I bought a boat from a couple who were both licensed, but they didn't know
their callsigns. Those were taped on the bulkhead by the radio on the boat,
in phonetics. There were ~140 licensees in town but barely 2 dozen who were
"real hams."
73 de W6OGC Jim Allen
Sent from my iPad
> On Dec 4, 2015, at 9:09 AM, rick@dj0ip.de <Rick@DJ0IP.de> wrote:
>
> Wow, either I lived in the wrong part of the states or things are a lot
> quieter in the north.
> I lived in Oklahoma from 2007 until 2010 and mostly just operated 40m and a
> few bigger contests.
> I also was only on the air on weekends.
> I found the band very crowded.
>
> I never operated 160 in the states but I do remember 80m being wall to wall,
> especially in the AM days.
>
> Granted the upper bands are not so crowded, but here in Europe, 80 and 40
> are very tight spaced.
> I almost always run my Eagle with 1.8 kHz on SSB and on CW usually 100 or
> 200 Hz.
> Of course our low bands are smaller than your bands are. Maybe that's why
> they are more crowded.
>
> On the licensing bit, nearly every ham I know here in Germany also has a
> stateside call sign.
> It's kind of a "in" thing to do. That also inflates the numbers.
>
> 73 - Rick, DJ0IP/NJ0IP/G5BMH
> (Nr. Frankfurt, Germany)
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TenTec [mailto:tentec-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Rob
> Atkinson
> Sent: Friday, December 04, 2015 12:36 PM
> To: tentec@contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TenTec] TenTec Digest, Vol 156, Issue 4
>
>> Our bands are way more crowded than they were back in the 70s, the days of
> the Triton IV.
>> Far more hams have amplifiers than back then.
>> Simple crystal filters won't cut it. They lack the steep skirts of the DSP
> filters.
>
> I see the complete opposite at least in North America. The level of
> activity on average on HF is much less than it was 40 years ago. Back then
> 160 m. was wall to wall at night. 80 m. cw was jammed. You
> could not find a clear frequency in the evening on 75. There is a
> myth based on the number of licensees but the total includes SKs, VHF ops,
> EmComms, paper hams, cyber hams, one day wonder test takers on a lark,
> astronauts, XYLs who now operate cell phones, and many other vestigial hams
> and when you subtract all of these, you are down to maybe at most 50,000
> operating active HF hams.
>
> Now, even QRMtests on weekends don't take out the whole band like they
> used to. And the sidewalks get rolled up at around 9 p.m. Tune
> around late and there's almost nothing.
>
> I operate mostly now with receivers from the 1940s and 1950s. No
> filters but IF cans. Maybe a ceramic filter in the 75A-3. No
> problems. The problem with making and selling a simple set is that
> it would be impossible to buy production quantities of parts, assemble here
> in the US, and sell at a price competitive with every vintage rig at any
> hamfest flea market. Sit down and make a rough list of needed parts, go
> looking on Mouser and other vendors and add up the cost.
> add in labor and other overhead and you will quickly see it won't fly.
>
>
> 73
>
> Rob
> K5UJ
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