On 2/22/07, Tony L. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Questions: > > 1) Has there been a decline in traffic and the number of active > repeaters in your area?
Reading everyone else's comments, I'm almost embarrassed to say this but... Our activity level in our club has been going up here in Denver. Especially on our wide-coverage VHF standalone rag-chew machine. Usage of our large VHF/220 linked system is flat or down a little. Usage of our autopatch is -- nil. Usage of our IRLP links... high. The UHF machines have always sat quiet most of the day, but seem to have a little activity once in a while, with the exception of the high-coverage UHF machine that has EchoIRLP on it. That one's getting a work-out... but it covers easily from Cheyenne, WY (we've had mobiles use it from 5 miles East of Laramie, WY) to the ridge-line between Colorado Springs and Denver to the south, and virtually the entire population of the Denver Metropolitan area, minus Boulder, CO... it's shadowed into there. 3-4 million people in the coverage area of that one machine -- probably 20-25 regular users. I always use that machine to call other tech-heads I've met through IRLP, the IRLP Convention in Las Vegas a few years ago, and other out-of-towners who've moved away or whatever... that want to keep in touch via IRLP. Another local ham calls the Vancouver area virtually every day on it... and there's a rowdy bunch up there... who are fun to talk with. (We have such a high density of good well-set-up IRLP enabled repeaters around here, that when people leave Denver for good... moving, job change, etc... they set up IRLP nodes where they move to, so they can call back here and say hello once in a while. You get used to having it available to you.) > 2) If so, what do you feel the primary cause is? New hams and content. Some hams tend to only participate in the regularly scheduled Nets on the big linked VHF system -- there's a Net just about every night of the week, with various special interests running each one. The new hams are on the air and rag-chewing, and just as interested as I was when I started in the early 90's. http://www.w0cra.org/info/nets.html I daresay (and have said it on the air too) that our club's repeaters wouldn't be very interesting without those groups using them. We enjoy having them around! We would be pretty dead without 'em. As far as the rag-chew goes... it gets mighty crazy on our wide-area VHF system... almost to the point of too crazy... and we've always kinda let it "go there"... as long as it stays legal and relatively sane... Hams with any desire to have an orderly and simple conversation, usually walk away from their rigs shaking their heads when they listen to that system... and once in a while I have to send out notices to people to back off of certain topics, etc... (We pride ourselves on being a system that FAMILIES can use, so no matter what the FCC says... sexual innuendo and topics are generally in poor taste no matter how you slice it... always assume kids are listening.) The doubling has been so bad that a new phrase popped up this last year... (people don't wait for the courtesy tone at all on that system, which grates at my nerves, but whatever...)... people key up, say a few words, say "check for double", unkey and then continue. Kinda funny. Sometimes people turn it into a personal zinger.. "Check for Nate"... Ha... Many local older hams HATE how that repeater sounds and came complaining to me when it was down a year ago -- begging us to put it back on the air since the ragchewers had migrated to their repeaters. People sometimes call it the "trash repeater", but I've heard REAL trash repeaters in Los Angeles... and it's definitely NOT that. So... I laughed quietly to myself all the way to the PA replacement... WE HAVE ACTIVITY... their machines sit quiet... and dead... most of the day. (So yes... overall activity is probably down... but not our systems!) That repeater is not for the faint of heart, or the easily annoyed... but it's almost always active... which in turn ends up being a continuous advertisement for the club... New hams buy a new inexpensive VHF radio, hit scan, hear activity there, find out it's our club, and then they look up our info, find we have plenty of other repeaters also... and join. Whether everyone likes it or not, that machine attracts all the newbies. And we work hard to foster a welcoming attitude (even slowing down the speed of the discussion, and the doubling... LOL...) when we hear a new voice or callsign. In fact, as club President I monitor over there almost all the time -- just to break in and welcome newbies. Because that's where they are... We also go out of our way to send a paper letter of welcome to every new person we hear. I can't take any credit for that part -- we have a couple of GREAT volunteers in our club that handle that. > 3) What can be done to generate renewed interest? It's all about content... if you don't have groups like the above in your area you could offer up your largest coverage linked system to... you may be in trouble. If you have enough regularly scheduled content, you eventually hit critical mass -- people start to interact and relate, and then they call each other up on the repeater out of the blue. On that note, even stranger... I *know* in my heart we have a few club members, that ONLY want to participate in the Nets. They *NEVER* talk on the repeaters, but check into almost every single Net. It's not my style... but I do understand it! And we're certainly happy to have them as members! Linking definitely helps, but there have been some grumblings as of late where the local coordinators might not be real happy to coordinate systems that have massive overlap in their linked system coverage. Our linked systems are spread out... so I can't disagree there. We do have VHF linked to 220 at the same location... a leftover from the days when Novices had voice privs on 220 and lots of families had Novices in them. We also ended up linking directly to that 220 repeater as part of the links... so ... taking it out now isn't really the greatest idea. Another interesting thing about Denver activity is that we've recently seen a huge resurgence in interest in VHF/UHF sideband activity. LOTS of newer hams with radios like the FT-100D, 706MKIIG, and especially the FT-857... have been experimenting and liking 2m and 70cm SSB. Being an avid VHF+ contest buff, of course I cajole and pick on every single person I know who has one of these rigs to GET ON SSB once in a while with it... it's so easy, and even a vertical is fine to start with... then you catch the antenna bug, and you start building loops, squalo's, maybe a yagi or two... It gets folks (who prior to this week had no HF privileges) doing things the rest of us are always doing in radio -- messing with antennas, trying new things... and that drives conversations... "Hey Nate... have you ever tried X type of antenna on your rover?"... stuff like that. Bouncing on and off the repeater... "Okay I'll meet you over on 432.1 in just a second, lets see if this antenna works." Stuff like that. I think the key to what we're seeing right now is that people have FRIENDS on the radio. We're all doing things outside of ham radio, or part of ham radio projects (like getting ready for a contest) where we're in someone's shack or driveway working on something, having a cold beer, watching the kiddos and dogs run around, having a good time... without that, we wouldn't have any reason to talk to each other on the radio. I think that's one MAJOR thing ham repeater organizations have to offer these days... people don't know their neighbors... we all rush around busy in our lives and barely know the people next door. Humans need some connections to others and people they know are "always there"... and ham radio during drive time around here is when the "entire gang" gets on to say our daily hellos... to people we know are there every day -- and when someone doesn't show up for a while we ask them, "Where you been, man?" Casual (some might say crappy) operating practices or not... people respond to hanging out with friends... Nate WY0X
