“There must be more to life than increasing its speed.” -Gandhi
It’s Thursday night, you’ve just finished dinner. Sitting down in front of your radio, you tune around a little, there are a couple Europeans in there under the noise, too faint for a good contact… and another couple of guys in nearby states already in a long conversation about the weather. You tune up, call CQ… nothing. Propagation predictions say that conditions are “very good” on this band right now… That’s it – 100KHz of bandwidth, three stations on the air. Was that propagation report really right?!
Once upon a time, it was possible for hams to contact nearly anywhere on earth, 24 hours/day. Things were more relaxed, and people seemed to have a lot of “spare time.” Our culture has changed.
Today, people don’t seem to have a chance to spend even 10 or 15 minutes on the air. It just isn’t a priority. Want to test that new antenna, or look for a new country? Better wait for a contest, or at least a holiday weekend.
So, most of the time, our bands go unused, until the next event or DXpedition comes around. It seems that now, the “competitive spirit” is the only thing that motivates people to actually turn on their radios.
It certainly isn’t the number of licensed hams – our population is growing, and at least in the HF segment of our hobby, (which tends to be, yes, older hams,) if anything, more people are retiring, and theoretically have more time on their hands…
One problem, specific to DXers, is the heavy weighting of the ham population in the “big three” countries – USA, Japan and Germany… example:
You are a ham in Finland. You get on the air and call CQ – and immediately generate a pile-up, with 90% of those in it coming from the above countries. If you are mainly looking for “new” countries, it could get pretty discouraging after a while…
I think that what we need are not “propagation predictions,” but “motivation predictions.”
Most of the media – ham radio books and magazines, the big on-line forums – are ignoring the elephant in the room – our bands are unused most of the time.
What can we do about it? As the ARRL says: “Better use it, or lose it!”
One strategy I personally like is to be less “picky.” I know I used to tune around, and when I heard a station, I would wait until they signed so that I could see if I “needed” them or not. Lately, I have tried to pay less attention to that, and just work them, whoever they are – by the time I look them up I could have worked them. I can go through my logged entries later. Several times I have gone over my LOTW results, and discovered new band/countries that I didn’t know I needed!
Another tactic I use is to try and work the weakest signals on the band – they could be QRP, and anxious to work me. Or the slow (CW) guys – I didn’t used to have the patience to send slowly, but now I believe I owe it to the “newer” hams – God bless them, anyone who takes the trouble to learn CW in this day and age should be congratulated. Let’s make them feel welcome.
The beauty of life is right where you are. Remember to enjoy the journey.
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