This has been an interminable week. Today should have been Friday. It seems, however, that tomorrow, sadly enough, is actually Friday.
I’m sitting here listening out on 2 meters, 146.700 — the most popular local repeater — on the Yaesu FT-7900 “base station”, and 146.625* on the Baofeng UV-5R HT just in case someone decides to use it. Most of the evening on .700 has been pretty much a wasteland…there’s a guy who spends a lot of time on there throughout the day who just absolutely drives me up a wall, and I figured out why — he reminds me of someone else I know who used to absolutely drive me up the wall, but worse. Most of the other “regulars” seem to be off doing other things tonight. Am I talking? No, I’m lurking. I don’t feel comfortable talking yet.
It seems like nobody uses the other 2-meter repeaters. Lord knows why, there are a dozen of them listed on the Indianapolis Repeater Association website. And the other thing that is somewhat irritating is that two guys who were sitting just a couple of blocks apart were monopolizing the .700 repeater this evening…I thought that when you were that close, you were supposed to go simplex and let other people use the repeater who might be too far apart to go simplex. I guess their local conversation was important enough to be heard across 9+ counties, or so they thought anyway.
Someone opined this evening that there wasn’t much traffic even on .700 tonight. Someone else stated their opinion that it’s due to the fact that the old hams are dying off. I think that’s probably right. It’s a shame we can’t get more people interested in old-fashioned amateur radio instead of Facebook, Twitter, and other Internet crap that rots your brain. Including blogs. Like this one. And I think my brain just rotted a bit when I typed that.
Oh, but wait. You have to take a test to be a ham. And if you don’t have a technical background, it’s kind of hard. And there’s math. Not much. But there is math.
Internet: No test, no math. It’s a no-brainer.
FWIW I’m trying to get a friend of mine — who has a deep, long-term, abiding interest in emergency management, fire-fighting, and suchlike — to get a ham license. I tried to give him my ARRL Technician book last Saturday, but he left it here. He’d be a natural for ARES, damn it.
Enough yack yack from me. Oh, and I finally got a call from Coal Creek, they’re sending my 1911 back with some basic repair done, and they wanted money. Not too much; I’m happy. I might have it back in time to take it to the range on Sunday, depending on whether priority mail gets here from there by Saturday.
Damn I need to feed the cats. I am wifeless until Sunday, and that’s normally her job.
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* Edited 5/6/2013 to note that I actually don’t listen on the 625 repeater from home now, because I discovered that I can’t reach it from here with the Baofeng. I ‘ve been listening to the 146.970 repeater instead, as it’s only a hop, skip and a jump from my house, and I can hit it reliably with the Baofeng. Not that anyone seems to use the 146.970 repeater for much.
I did hit the 700 repeater with the Baofeng from North and Illinois last week during the ARES net, which surprised me because there was a ton of static in the reception. I guess standing outside the west entrance of the Scottish Rite Cathedral doesn’t give one much of a shot at the repeater up north…maybe I should have gone up in the bell tower 🙂