It’s highly likely I’m doing something wrong, but I’m getting nothing on the 2m & 70cm bands in eastern Toronto of an evening. After a week of dedicated listening, I’ve stumbled upon a couple of nets (one of which I briefly participated in), heard one morning commute chat, noted a couple of dudes talking about power supplies in Portuguese, and managed to key up a repeater which said hello back to me. That’s it.
I’m not expecting the airwaves to be crackling with witty repartee all the time, but most of the time there seems to be no-one out there. Calling CQ on simplex VHF might as well be shouting into a hole.
I know I have a cheapo rig and a flimsy aerial, but I must be able to contact people within the neighbouring kilometres … must I?
3 replies on “the silence of the hams”
[…] post, I went a bit nuts with working out the whole amateur radio grid locator thing (not that I’m currently likely to use it, though). I’d hoped to provide a shapefile of the entire world, but that would be too big for […]
How do you like the Wouxun? I’ve been seeing more and more on ebay and web retailers and the prices are a fair bit lower than anything else new out there…
It’s not bad. The UI could be better, but it’s well made.