Yesterday afternoon while driving down the highway, I tuned into a local repeater located in Torrington CT. The entire time I was on the highway (roughly 15 minutes), these two Hams held the repeater hostage. From what I could tell, they had been chatting for some time prior to be tuning into that repeater. Their chat was rather boring but after about 5 minutes without either of them pausing, I became agitated. Not once did either of them open the repeater up to any one else.
Does anyone else have this problem?
I think it is fair to say that if you are going to have a 20 minute + chat about your Condo associations tyranny and rules about curtains, bird feeders and such, you should either switch to a simplex frequency or use your cell phone so that other Hams like myself and the other guy who couldn't get a word in edgewise until one of you had to take a break to go to the ATM, could utilize the repeater.
By the way, that other ham sounded like a newer operator, I am sure he doesn't appreciate having you spell out your callsign using gibberish instead of the phonetic alphabet. I'd post your callsign but I'd rather not call you out in an open forum. I wrote it down anyway.
So please, understand that there are many Ham radio operators out there besides you and your pal. Be courteous and have some respect for other Hams.
Does anyone else have this problem?
I think it is fair to say that if you are going to have a 20 minute + chat about your Condo associations tyranny and rules about curtains, bird feeders and such, you should either switch to a simplex frequency or use your cell phone so that other Hams like myself and the other guy who couldn't get a word in edgewise until one of you had to take a break to go to the ATM, could utilize the repeater.
By the way, that other ham sounded like a newer operator, I am sure he doesn't appreciate having you spell out your callsign using gibberish instead of the phonetic alphabet. I'd post your callsign but I'd rather not call you out in an open forum. I wrote it down anyway.
So please, understand that there are many Ham radio operators out there besides you and your pal. Be courteous and have some respect for other Hams.