Repeaters

[SteveShannon]

51 minutes ago, nokones said:

Because in the larger Metropolitan Areas such as Southern California, Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas, the gazillion 2M and 70 cm repeaters sit idle with virtually no traffic at all.

A couple days ago, out of about 30 repeaters in the Phoenix Area only one repeater had about 2-3 minutes of traffic all day long.

Except for special events, most ham traffic is not on VHF/UHF and not through repeaters. Those repeaters will certainly see use during special events, nets, or sometimes casually by hams as they run errands or travel through a city. I have used the Phoenix DMR repeaters before, but 99% of my ham activities are spent on HF making contacts directly to other hams. There’s no real challenge to making contacts via repeaters and a lot of ham radio is about making distant connections, exchanging signal reports, and moving to the next connection. I’ll see if I can show you a signal report map showing a snippet in time in the Phoenix area.

Here’s a map from PSKreporter of activity over the past hour: Each inverted teardrop shows one ham.  I suspect you’ll agree that between 5 and 6 AM is probably not a really busy ham time, but there are still a pretty decent number of people who are working contacts using digital modes.  None of this is through a single repeater and they are almost all trying to make contacts with someone at some distance:

[WRYZ926]

We have a total of 6 repeaters. Our 2m repeater sees the most traffic and somedays it is really busy and other days you might go hours in-between hearing anyone. Then we have our GMRS repeater and it is the same way as our 2m repeater.We also have our main 70cm repeater at the same location that hardly gets used anymore. We also have two other 70cm repeaters that are located at opposite ends of our area.

All three 70cm repeaters are currently setup for analog and DMR. No one uses DMR or any other digital FM modes. So we are in the process of getting rid of DMR and will then have all three linked together with the ability to to also link the three to our 2m repeater.

Our 2m repeater has around an 80 mile radius of coverage so we get a bit of traffic from people traveling through mid Missouri.

As Steve has mentioned, there is definitely more to amateur radio than talking on FM repeaters. a lot of guys use Single Side Band on the HF bands and even on the 2m band. And there are all of the different digital modes being used along with CW.

Just because you don't hear anyone on the 2m/70cm repeaters in your area doesn't mean that amateur radio is dead. 

[AdmiralCochrane]

10 hours ago, nokones said:

Because in the larger Metropolitan Areas such as Southern California, Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas, the gazillion 2M and 70 cm repeaters sit idle with virtually no traffic at all.

A couple days ago, out of about 30 repeaters in the Phoenix Area only one repeater had about 2-3 minutes of traffic all day long.

Maybe it's a regional thing.  In central MD dozens of repeaters have dozens of daily users.  I am certain the NYC metro area is likewise.  DC/Baltimore and NYC are certainly larger Metro Areas.

 

As above, FM VHF and UHF are a tiny fraction of amateur radio.

[WSEZ864]

36 minutes ago, AdmiralCochrane said:

Maybe it's a regional thing.  In central MD dozens of repeaters have dozens of daily users.  I am certain the NYC metro area is likewise.  DC/Baltimore and NYC are certainly larger Metro Areas.

 

As above, FM VHF and UHF are a tiny fraction of amateur radio.

Agreed. As SteveShannon and AdmiralCochrane stated, VHF/UHF repeater use, while often active, is really not the main attraction in amateur radio. I hear about the same central Maryland repeater traffic AdmiralCochrane does and many of our local 2m and 70cm repeaters do have some very busy periods, but the real activity is on HF, where one can talk to people all over the world. It is very seldom that one can find an open HF band that doesn't have worldwide activity.

I do monitor some of the local VHF repeater traffic and check into some of the nets (ARES & our club's), but my main interest is in making long range contacts. Like trout fishing, you watch for the rise (listen for a station down in the noise), then cast to the fish (try calling the station) in an effort to catch the fish (make the unusual contact).

[OffRoaderX]

5 minutes ago, WSEZ864 said:

the real activity is on HF, where one can talk to people all over the world.

Its easier to use the Grindr app.

[SteveShannon]

50 minutes ago, OffRoaderX said:

It’s easier to use the Grindr app.

I don’t understand their signal reporting.

[OffRoaderX]

13 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

I don’t understand their signal reporting.

The scale is in inches.

[BoxCar]

34 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

I don’t understand their signal reporting.

20 minutes ago, OffRoaderX said:

The scale is in inches.

I'm surprised they haven't gone metric as the numbers would be larger.

[WSEZ864]

2 hours ago, OffRoaderX said:

Its easier to use the Grindr app.

Their goals greatly differ from mine, but may suit some people who are familiar enough with the app to want to recommend it.