Making the most of whats left of the VHF/UHF bands

[rf_patriot200]

There's More flavors of ham radio, than there are ice cream, and we all have our favorites .

 

[K9KLC]

I actually rarely do anything above HF. But when I do, I use the right tool for the job. I have two 5550e and a FT-7800 in my car. But when I travel, those stay at home....along with the antenna and mount. We get that you don't like VOIP. That's fine too.

But to get the thread back on topic, that's where all the VHF/UHF users have gone. You can like that or not. I don't care. But that's where they are. Last time I did some research on this and manipulated the databases to get rid of club calls, duplicate users, etc., there were over 120,000 unique US hams in the DMR database alone. Even if we have 500,000 active hams in the US (the number is likely considerably less than that), you're looking at probably 25% of active hams who got themselves a digital ID over the past several years. That's a HUGE number of hams.

I neither like it or dislike it. LOL I have a DMR dashboard I occasionally watch and a quick guess would be 85% or better are on some sort of hotspot device rather than coming on thru a repeater.

I think you may have missed I do some VOIP I just come in thru a repeater when do that. I said at this time hotspots are not for me. If I was confined to a nursing home, all other methods exhausted then sure, I'd dust mine off, see if it still works or just build and get a new card for a new one. I likely have enough stuff here to build 3 more and a spare pi0w. I may actually one day for goggles and grins use the pi3b+ and slap a hat on it, but that won't be today. I prefer D-Star (but do most of the digital voice modes simplex). A group of us also do 900 MHz both analog and DMR. The bulk of us have 5580's in the house or car and either 6580's or 7580's for ht usage Icom 5100's rule at the moment for me for mobile and base.

I totally agree, that's where a lot of hams are. And there are likely going to be more joining them. It's the way is. One day, hopefully not In my lifetime, we may see ham just go away as we know it today.

Enjoy OM. 73.