A recent missive from Tom, W8WTD, the ARRL Great Lakes Division Vice Director reads:
Of the many ways that ham radio has changed over the years, one of them has to be in the operating habits of many of us. It used to be that you could find contacts on the HF bands easily, whenever they were open. (As an operator who prefers SSB, I wish we were at a different point in the sunspot cycle. Oh well….) Of course, there are still some contacts to be made. But not as easily. Maybe our schedules provide us with so many more things to do that we allocate less time to radio.
So “events” become more important. Probably the biggest event to bring out lots of activity of HF was the National Parks on the Air several years ago. It was the right combination of contesting, contacting, portable operating, etc., to really make a hit with hams and get a lot of radio waves stirred up.
There are still lots of operating events to take advantage of. For example, the state QSO parties usually do well for participation. So if you’re looking for an “event,” you can probably find something to operate in most weekends.
A short-term “event” sponsored by ARRL is coming up right now. The Hiram Percy Maxim Birthday Celebration starts on August 31st and runs through September 8th. Full details are on the ARRL website or in the September issue of QST.
Some of us need an “excuse” to get on the air, or at least an assurance that we’ll find stations to work. This is a good one. Hope we take advantage of it.
Doesn’t it seem kind of crazy that we need an excuse to get on the air? Shouldn’t something being fun to do be its own excuse? And, if it’s not fun, why do it at ll?
As far as operating events go, events like the ARRL’s 100th Anniversary event and National Parks on the Air thing were great. They added to the fun of operating, but this Hiram Percy Maxim thing seemed too contrived. I guess if we need an excuse, it should be a good excuse.
Seems like random meetings must reach a ‘critical mass’ to gain traction.
For instance, FT8 has proven to be a popular ‘watering hole’ where folks gather. It acts as a ‘concentrater’ to get a bunch of hams confined to a small segment of the band, thus a ‘critical mass’.
Contests and other popular operating events do the same, by encouraging a ‘critical mass’ of hams to agree to meet at an appointed time and location (frequency/bands).
Otherwise, fishing for contacts on an otherwise empty-appearing band can be frustrating. Other folks deal with this by making ‘skeds’ with some old friends to meet daily/weekly on some particular frequency.
These are all designed to maximize the probability that someone that wants to operate will find like-minded folks on the other end of the circuit.
A counter-example would be Brandmeister’s recent banning of folks camping out on TAC 310 with their hotspots. This was becoming a very popular watering hold for DMR operators, who otherwise were dealing with the usual ’empty repeater’ miasma these days. Instead of solving the bandwidth issues that the popularity of TAC 310 was causing, Brandmeister management decided instead to kill the jelling phenomena. We should be so lucky to have such a popular meeting place pop up on DMR.
As of right now, I don’t have a home station, so it takes an event for me to gather up the gear and get on the air. One of the reasons I love POTA so much is the excuse to get out an operate. Also, it has forced me to put together a go-kit for HF.