No One, Anywhere, Having Good VHF QSOs
By WBØRUR, on the scene
GRAIN HARVEST, Idaho — A new study by the National Radio Retransmission Legion indicates that no ham is having an actual conversation on any frequency in the 2 meter band.
Jonny “Doc” Doolittle of rural Grain Harvest, Idaho, says it’s not just poor propagation that is to blame.
“We all bought one of those low-cost Chinese handie-talkies,” says the potato farmer via telephone from his home just outside of LaCrosse. “Now all we hear on the local repeater is every 6th word with lots of garbled transmissions and noise. Those radios are feature packed with everything except a good receiver. Oh, there’s the occasional complete sentence…but nothing you could even vaguely describe as a full conversation.”
As a result of the study, the North American VHF Repeater Owners Association is considering a resolution to “power-down” all repeaters between the hours of 7 a.m. and Midnight since no one is able to make radio contact anyway.
### HamHijinks.com
photo credit: IMG_1159 via photopin (license)
About time someone realized that we need to just shutdown those bandwidth hogging repeaters. Can utilize those liberated frequencies for more digital modes and satellite links, simplex repeaters to other countries via links over the internet. Shoot, even going simplex might spur an actual conversation or two that might just give people listening on scanners a reason to actually go and memorize the question pools and get a license to throw in the draw and gather dust, never to see daylight again.
Hey, we might even see someone have the chance to make that once in a lifetime contact with Cuba from Key West if all the repeaters were shutdown. Shoot if their lucky, Fidel might even answer a simplex vhf phone patch with that lucky person and ask them to help out with the ongoing revolution down there and supply health and welfare messages,
:^)
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