Topband: An Admission

[Greg - ZL3IX]

Well, guys, I have to admit that I sometimes self spot as well.  My reasons 
are similar to those of Tree in his earlier post.  Sometimes the band sounds 
totally dead, and I wonder just how dead.  If I give folks a frequency to 
listen on, they may spend a few minutes just on that spot, to see if I come 
out the QSB, while if they were tuning across at random, they would not do 
that.  I certainly pause for a while when I know for sure that someone is 
calling on a particular freq.

I do it with guys I have worked many times before, and I use ON4KST's LF 
Chat for the same reason.  Being relatively new (8 years) to TB, I have a 
lot to learn about propagation, but listening to the fading patterns on 
signals I know to be present, has taught me a lot that I would not otherwise 
have picked up.

No crime in that I hope.

There's no doubt that the Internet has CHANGED the way we do radio.  Some of 
it IS bad.  I have received listener cards from guys who were 4 and 5 hours 
into daylight when they claimed they heard me.  It's not all bad though, so 
let's all do it as it grabs us.

73, Greg, ZL3IX