Is it just me, or has their been a significant drop in the amount of "on the air" activity on HF over the past year or so? I realize conditions have not been the best lately, but having been a ham through several sunspot cycles, I must say that I have never heard all of the bands lacking signals, both foreign and domestic, as they appear to be lacking now.
This morning, VR2IG was on 20m calling CQ with an S9 signal. I spotted him on the cluster, but no one else called him, even after he was spotted. Now, I realize that VR2 is not all that rare for a seasoned dx'er, but I remember in years past when a JA could generate a pileup! He finally gave up and went QRT without another stateside station giving him a call. I can also tune the bottom end of the 80 and 40m bands on any given evening and not hear a single signal for many, many KHz. Who needs to use a CW filter anymore, except during a contest? Elimination of the code as a requirement for an HF license is the least of our problems. If we don't get some new blood on HF on any mode, using the bands to "promote the radio art", there won't be enough of us left to matter anyway. Instead of bantering back and forth on Internet email groups, maybe we should be spending more time on the air and less on the keyboard and mouse. 73 de Bill Subscribe/unsubscribe, feedback, FAQ, problems http://njdxa.org/dx-chat To post a message, DX related items only, [email protected] This is the DX-CHAT reflector sponsored by the NJDXA http://njdxa.org
