[VHFcontesting] Trends in VHF/UHF Weak Signal Operations

[beamar]

On Feb 10, 2014, at 3:49:01 PM, "Les Rayburn" <les at highnoonfilm.com> wrote:

How many amateurs would really care if we lose our allocation at 3 GHz? 
The answer to the question posed above is very few. But, that may not always be the case. The following text is a quote from a presentation on weak signal work that I gave at a recent hamfest: 

"Put hams on 200M and down! In 1912, the frequencies above 1500 KHz were considered useless. Amateur Radio got 40M as a band, in 1924. Reading the DX column, in the January 1925 issue of QST, it seems that no frequency above 75M was considered to be useful for DX. Hams got 10M in, 1927. It was the early 1940s, before anyone considered it useful. In 1946, many hams referred to 2M as a “flashlight” band. That is, propagation was akin to light waves. In 1969, when I was licensed, 2M was considered to be the highest frequency band that was useful for communications. “You can?t talk anywhere on 220 MHz”, I was told.  In 1979, when I bought my first 440 FM radio, I was told , “You can?t talk very far on 440”. Now days, many Radio Amateurs thinks it takes the resources of a governmental agency or a telephone company to successfully communicate above 450 MHz."
So, following the trend, as outlined in my P/P presentation. It will probably be another twenty to forty years, before the average ham considers 3 Gigs to be useful. 

Buddy WB4OMG