--- 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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