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Vintage Amateur and Military Radio Amateur/military receivers and transmitters, morse, and any other related vintage comms equipment.

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Old 30th Aug 2018, 9:37 am   #101
ex seismic
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

West Kent ARS have a weekly 2m Monday evening net except for the second Monday which is the club monthly meeting.

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Old 30th Aug 2018, 4:40 pm   #102
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

2 stations heard on my handheld this afternoon and at good strength.
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Old 31st Aug 2018, 10:56 am   #103
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Things have certainly changed since I got my licence in 1984. All I had was an SX200 scanning receiver and a homebrew 750mW FM transmitter, my first successful synthesised project. 'Horizontal FM' was in favour with those who fancied something different, so I erected a Jaybeam 4 ele on a rotator on the chimney stack and worked all over the country. It's amazing how well low power FM can work if you have a willing partner at the other end.
Re the comment about SSB above (post 72). One of the things that drove me away from 2m SSB was the fact that an awful lot of more recent licencees hadn't the foggiest notion of how to use their radios. I'd stumble across an SSB QSO and tune in carefully, only to find that his QSO partner was off-frequency. It would quickly become apparent that one or both of them was using the 'receiver independent tuning' to do the final tweaking, rather than netting properly with the VFO. This meant that if I called in, one or both of them would tell me I was off-frequency. So I was left with a dilemma - either don't call in at all or call in and try to persuade them to get on frequency properly. Realising that barging into a QSO and giving lessons on tuning their own radios would probably not go down well, I would stay quiet.
It seems modern users are obsessed with dialling up the exact frequency (to the nearest KHz) so that their whiz-bang digital displays read exactly the same, then using the RIT so as not to disturb it. Perhaps I'm a bit anal....
Sorry, bit of a rant.
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Old 31st Aug 2018, 12:27 pm   #104
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Not really come across that problem Andy,or not yet.
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Old 31st Aug 2018, 1:10 pm   #105
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Back in the good old days I had a crystal which put me on about 144.73kHz. People with their new-fangled shop-bought transceivers could receive me on 144.725kHz and then tried to tell me I was 'off-channel'. I sometimes said that I was not on a channel but on a frequency.
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Old 31st Aug 2018, 1:47 pm   #106
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Similar here, I used a xtal for 144.72MHz on an old Pye Vanguard, I was also told I was "off frequency."
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Old 31st Aug 2018, 2:09 pm   #107
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew2 View Post
It seems modern users are obsessed with dialling up the exact frequency (to the nearest KHz) so that their whiz-bang digital displays read exactly the same, then using the RIT so as not to disturb it. Perhaps I'm a bit anal....
Sorry, bit of a rant.
Reminds me of my first attempt to VFO-ize a FM Vanguard using a free-running OC171 oscillator around 4MHz. Such was the level of drift (caused by the osc being powered-off on receive) that it'd drifted right out of the passband of a typical FM transceiver of the era by the time I was due to transmit for my next 'over'.

The problem was that if I left the TX VFO running all the time its harmonic desensitized the receiver. I fixed the problem in what I thought was a cunning way: leave the TX VFO running all the time but on receive use a diode-switch and small capacitor to pull the TX VFO down by around 50KHz so the harmonic was no longer on the RX frequency.
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Old 31st Aug 2018, 10:24 pm   #108
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

99% of the 2M activity in my area is on repeaters. Very little L.O.S. anymore, anywhere.
6M is almost totally dead.
Some activity on 220 & 440. Mostly repeater stuff.
This is in the U.S. though.
Also many repeaters went to tone encoding to access, as the illegal ops/ CB'ers were jamming the repeaters.
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Old 1st Sep 2018, 10:48 am   #109
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

I live on high ground in the West Midlands and rarely hear much scanning 2m these days except people calling to see if their friend is listening and the odd QSO between club members. It's not often a CQ call is heard. I do remember the days when it was difficult to find a vacant simplex channel to move to off S20, so there has certainly been a step-change in activity.

Listening on the Hack Green VHF/UHF SDR this morning (Saturday) 2m is busy up in N Staffs with 3 simplex QSOs, one repeater in use, a Raynet operation, SSB calling freq in use and two stations in the USA chatting on Echolink.

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Old 4th Sep 2018, 7:36 am   #110
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Martin

You and I must have worked back when 2m was busy. I was G8YJI in Dudley

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Old 4th Sep 2018, 9:41 pm   #111
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Yes indeed David, in Oct 80 and on page two of my first logbook.

In week one I worked 33 different callsigns on 2m. Not sure that would be possible today?

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Old 4th Sep 2018, 11:46 pm   #112
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Back in the mid-1980s, GM4WZP, a collegue, carted a radio, battery and antenna up every single muro peak and got at least one QSO from all but a few.

Also not possible any longer..

David
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Old 4th Sep 2018, 11:48 pm   #113
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sparky67 View Post
Yes indeed David, in Oct 80 and on page two of my first logbook. In week one I worked 33 different callsigns on 2m. Not sure that would be possible today?
I'm surprised at that. My (mistaken?) recollection was that 2m AM activity peaked in the early 70's, was displaced by the arrival of SSB and FM and had greatly tailed off by 1980. I suppose it varied from area to area.

I filled my first standard RSGB logbook between 1969 and ~1971. My second RSGB logbook still has lots of space in it.

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Old 5th Sep 2018, 7:34 am   #114
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Default Re: Users of 2 metre Amateur Band?

Thanks Martin, I'll check my logbook too. Nice to close the loop, so to speak.
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Old 5th Sep 2018, 9:35 am   #115
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I worked three last night! A station in Bournmouth wanting a signal check, then joined by a mobile in North Dorset somewhere, plus a station somewhere the other side of Salisbury, had quite a little net going for about half an hour. But it's the exception rather than the rule.

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Old 5th Sep 2018, 9:57 am   #116
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Keep it up!
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Old 5th Sep 2018, 1:56 pm   #117
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Last weekend I attempted a 2m 'sked' from one of my preferred locations on the North York Moors with a colleague who was due to pop up in my normal location - Tyneside. That failed miserably because of some problem with his setup, but while waiting for him I heard dozens of stations, some of them callsigns I have not heard for many years, feeding back to the GB2RS newsreader. Then after the failed 'sked' I heard the RAFARS net start up and that was also well attended by stations in and around the Tyneside area.

Finally, I put a CQ call out myself and was answered by a station near Alnwick, Northumberland, some 60-70 miles away. I'd have gone on to try for a few more contacts but I received a summons from on high telling me we needed some grocery items. For some reason I, as the person already out and about in a car and doing nothing much, was deemed the most suitable candidate for this task... so I had to come down off my lofty perch and back to real life.
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Old 5th Sep 2018, 5:22 pm   #118
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Just had a quick chat using 2M simplex with someone doing the SOTA thing while on my way home from work. (I pulled over). So yes, there is still activity out there, but someone has to make the first move. Most of the activity I hear seems to be on the 2 metre calling channel from SOTA stations. I suppose the high ground helps as I often hear stations calling from the Lake District or Southern Scotland while at work or travelling on the A68 which has long stretches in the hills. I always monitor the local repeater (HA) and the 2 metre calling channel S20 on 145.500 while at work.
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Old 6th Sep 2018, 9:10 am   #119
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I shall be in north Yorkshire in at the end of the month, will have to take a handy with me, although mine aren't very handy they are Brick shaped.

Peter
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Old 6th Sep 2018, 9:51 am   #120
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You are strangely mirroring my movements earlier this year as I was in Dorset (among other places in the south west) in July. I didn't do much on the radio but when I did put a radio on it was a 4m radio, which I put calls out on from Whiteway (?) car park on the down above Tyneham. I got a call back from a G6 on 4m, so there is life even there.

On the evening of the same day I went up to the Hardy monument (my first ever time there) and was baffled to find the car park gated and closed even in the late afternoon in July. I had planned to sit there for an hour or so putting out calls while enjoying the view, but instead moved on to somewhere less hostile to visitors.
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