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Old 22nd Aug 2018, 9:18 pm   #41
G4YVM David
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

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Originally Posted by TimLiggins View Post
The bottom line is that everone's discussing here rather than on the air!
If youd been on air recently you'd see we have no choice. Hf propagation is appalling and inter G very sporadic.

If you fancy a quick try on 40 or 80 though, I am up for it. I try to listen on the FISTS frequencies (7028 and 3558)if Im in the workshop. Give me a call

D
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Old 22nd Aug 2018, 9:23 pm   #42
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

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Originally Posted by M0AFJ, Tim View Post
Admittedly the level of activity is not the same as it was in the 70/80’s but there is good stuff going on.
Looking in my old class B logbook, the furthest I managed on 2m SSB was on the 11th June 1985 and there must have been some crazy sporadic E because I contacted YO2IS (Romania), YU1MWP (Yugoslavia) and I6IQU (Italy) on the same day. On 20th June 1985 I can see I was experimenting with Oscar 10 using 2m and 70cms.

I was just a student at the time and my cheapo setup was a 10m converted SSB CB driving a transverter to 144MHz. I used another CB and another transverter for 70cms.
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Old 22nd Aug 2018, 11:04 pm   #43
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Your posts made me check my own log for the period. It seems I had discovered the Oxo amd was working the world on a watt!
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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 11:13 am   #44
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Thanks everyone for your very interesting responses to this thread, I hadn't expected such a varied amount of content in the number of replies. As explained in my opening post I am not a radio amateur, but your replies reinforce just how silent the 2m band has become in some geographical areas, and far from the days when I listened via a ‘Sentinel’ 2m converter to some interesting and technically educating conversations – including call-signs!

The reason I asked the question was because I am currently using the Graves radar transmissions on 143.049MHz to monitor meteors, and was surprised at how little ham activity there was in the amateur band, with the exception of the GB3VHF beacon which is sited only a few miles from my location. As many have said, with the increasing amount of digital ‘everything’, the motivation to use the band has kind of been removed – substituted by the smartphone and cheap handhelds. I applaud those of you determined to keep things going by investing your time in building or re-building the analogue equipment that held the interest, and was so much the mainstay of the hobby in days gone by.

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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 12:39 pm   #45
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

My period as an active radio amateur spans (though, of course, this is subjective) what I consider to be the golden era of 2 metres: from the latter years of the 1960s to the mid 1980s which evolved from the period of much home-built mainly AM equipment and 'tuning the band high to low' to the advent of repeaters, compact mobiles, hand-held portables and all-singing-all-dancing FM/SSB/CW transceivers.

The element of snobbery that occasionally surfaced between the class A and class B licencees was back then sometimes inverted with the G8s considering themselves superior in as much as they had to do much construction to get on the air as opposed to increasing dominance of commerical gear on HF.

I was mainly an SSB/CW operator but I remember 2m being very busy. Through modifying basic equipment to improve its spec I learned a heck of a lot and enjoyed the challenge of DX on low power. I made a lot of friends over the air and we learned from each other and had quite an active social scene. Several of us then G8s learned CW together and on gaining my G4 I had some great 2m CW ragchews with 1.5 watts! I also remember some fantastic tropo openings when the band sounded like 20m - one which went on for about three days towards the end of 1979 comes to mind.

By the mid to late 1980s I had noticed a change. Changes to the format of the RAE, the CB boom and the availability of almost 'plug in and play' set-ups for 2m brought a different type of operator, perhaps for whom it was more of a passing fad. The SSB end of the band became steadily quieter and, with a house-move, I went QRT (sorry, David G4EBT!). The few times I have hung up my old halo aerial and had a listen around I have found the SSB end dead.

The RSGB is right to be worried about amateur band allocations but I think the greater concern is the microwave part of the spectrum where commercial operators probably cast a predatory eye.

Today the major problem with HF is the generally appalling conditions that currently exist. The appeal for most was always the faraway stuff and the variable propagation conditions that might bring some exotic callsign fading in and out of the ether.

All hobbies have their golden age - moreso if they are technical as time makes what once seemed science fiction commonplace. There will always be a place for amateur radio but in the age of the smartphone and internet, with the accessible-for-all reliable global communication and entertainment platform it provides, the magic, sadly, has largely and inevitably gone.
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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 1:28 pm   #46
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

True. I was lying awake this morning wondering at what point would we say amateur radio is dead. I had to conclude that on VHF that point has been reached. I know there are the die hard digital fans and jt65 moon bouncers, but they are nothing. The casual or seasoned listener to VHF will hear nothing. It's over because it's now in a cycle of "nothing on so I won't go on". It's demise is self sustaining.

D
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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 2:00 pm   #47
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Looks like I now have a lot of worthless junk in the forum of amateur and ex-PMR VHF/UHF transceivers!
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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 3:20 pm   #48
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

RAYNET still make heavy use of 2m. It remains the most useful band for medium area networks.

You will find days when RAYNET will have a number of frequencies in use joined up by a network of rebros.
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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 3:59 pm   #49
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

I do not want 2M to go,as I still have a Nagi Linear and TS700G sat here awaiting beam erection and when that happens I will give it my best shot.

Plus I have a fast scan 70Cm tv setup though I fear that is all digital now and the Fortop tx is redundant.
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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 4:32 pm   #50
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Don't get me wrong, I don't WANT 2m to go either. It has always been a favoured band for me but I live in a radio shadow so it's useless. Even when I go portable it is dead. Raynet aside, the casual use of 2m is over. I find that really sad. I recall the days when club members wanted to talk to each other!

A few of us have followed FISTS onti Zello, a network radio channel, but of all fists members there are usually two on. Two.

Cest la vie
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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 6:59 pm   #51
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

I guess the underlying Zeitgeist here has to be 'it depends'.

2M FM since the 1970s was always a 'chat' service - nattering to people within 100 miles or so. Mobile, extended coverage through repeaters, it was a great way to provide some degree of intellectual distraction to those of us whose 'flying office' was a Ford Granada hurtling up the outside-lane of the M6 to our next appointment.

2M SSB [and the 'horizontal FM' types who hung out between 144.6 and 145] was a different world.

Then in the early-1990s we got AX25 'slow internet' bulletin-boards on 144.65ish which was great in the early days when a Pye MX294 and 5x5/8 collinear in Wiltshire could connect to nodes in Dorset, Gloucestershire and - if the wind was in the right direction - Warwickshire.

These days 2M FM is totally-dead.

On SSB you need to be in the right place at the right time to grab a few good contacts.

Sidenote #1`: I really wish our older licensed colleagues could stop referring to the long-obsolete "BR68" book-of-words when they complain that we've not identified-ourselves-in-the-last-15-minutes.

Sidenote #2: I really don't like using "Q-codes" when in free conversation. They're entirely unncessary and to me only smack of 'elitism' from those who consider CW as the only-way-to-communicate.
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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 7:04 pm   #52
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Why all the negativity and presumption that we are going to lose 2m? If it's dead, wake it up and lots of others will do the same. Sitting back complaining but doing nothing will produce a downward spiral.
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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 7:48 pm   #53
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

No, they won't. I and others have tried and tried and tried. I spent a lot of time and not a little cash getting my VHF station to a good SSB set up...I wasted the lot. In two years I managed about three countries during tropo, a few contest stations but zero, genuinely ZERO casual SSB QSO.

I managed nothing at all on CW.

I'd love to chat on 2m SSB again. Maybe we could sked portable?

David
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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 9:38 pm   #54
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

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Why all the negativity and presumption that we are going to lose 2m? If it's dead, wake it up and lots of others will do the same. Sitting back complaining but doing nothing will produce a downward spiral.
I don't think anyone's suggesting we will lose 2M: truth is, the 66-88MHz and 148-174MHz PMR bands - where once you'd have had to fight tooth-and-nail (and often slip a brown envelope-full-of-tenners to someone in order to get a dedicated channel) are now desolate unpopulated RF wastelands.

The low- and high-VHF bands are not really attractive to the burgeoning mobile-data market; even the 400-470MHz slice [which in many European countries - like Finland, with their NMT450 - was their spectrum-of-choice] is unattractive because of the need for protrudey antennas.

Indeed, half-a-decade back us hams got given - for free - a whole extra Megahertz above the traditional 144-146MHz slice. That's hardly the action of a spectrum-regulator who wants to sell off frequencies to the highest bidder.

OK - so rather than moaning about the lack of traffic on 2M, who will be the first to grab the opportunity and do some hi-fi wideband-FM stereo transmissions in that 146-147MHz allocation?
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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 10:16 pm   #55
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

My memory of 2 metres was of lots of homebrew stuff by the pioneering types.....gradually declined.....sort of turned into a repeater come chat line/CB kind of thing with a load of hand helds being used, Icom this..Icom that..Icom the other, never did understand the point of using repeaters but I expect someone will enlighten me.....

Lawrence.
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Old 23rd Aug 2018, 10:32 pm   #56
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

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Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
I really don't like using "Q-codes" when in free conversation. They're entirely unncessary and to me only smack of 'elitism' from those who consider CW as the only-way-to-communicate.
It's just jargon that has come down the years and every trade or activity has it. However when I was a G8 working DX with 3 watts of SSB I found Q codes very useful - especially with those whose first language was not English.

(And I've just realised I've used DX without even thinking about it.)
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Old 24th Aug 2018, 9:39 am   #57
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I blame the clubs. Most radio clubs used to have a daily or weekly net on 2m simplex. Now they're all on Fusion, whatever that means, or some other fancy digital voice nonsense, chatting like it's 1999 Yahoo voice chat!
 
Old 24th Aug 2018, 10:15 am   #58
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

There is at least one club around the Lincoln area that has a weekly 2M night.
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Old 24th Aug 2018, 2:09 pm   #59
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

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Originally Posted by G6Tanuki
OK - so rather than moaning about the lack of traffic on 2M, who will be the first to grab the opportunity and do some hi-fi wideband-FM stereo transmissions in that 146-147MHz allocation?
I seem to recall that Angus Mackenzie did this in the late 1970s.
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Old 24th Aug 2018, 11:24 pm   #60
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I do not want 2M to go,as I still have a Nagi Linear
Is that a NAG-144XL? If so, do you have the manual?
I've just come across a photocopy of the user manual (in English & Japanese) with circuit diagrams for the 2070 and 2200/2150 versions.
Yours if you want it, FOC.
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