I admit it, I’ve given up on antenna building– it’s not that I can’t hack up a dipole, because I do know how to do that. I’ve given up because it’s just too much work. Call me a card carrying member of the internet generation if you like, I just don’t have the motivation and time anymore. So when it came down to it, I got online and ordered a MFJ 6m twinlead jpole from AES and had that puppy shipped to my QTH.
As always, antenna placement is a problem. Today, I said to heck with it and nailed the end of a spool of string to a softball, pulled out a bunch of said string, tied one end to the jpole, and threw it up into a pine tree in front of my apartment building. I probably could have placed it higher, but my front yard is apparently a breeding ground for mosquitos who think Deep Woods Off! is just yummy. I had no problem getting to the local repeater, and after scanning for a few minutes I could hear a repeater on 53.73Mhz that wasn’t on my WAR listing.
After listening a bit, I discovered that the repeater I was hearing was the KQ2H repeater system in New York. I was able to get into the repeater, but so was the eastern half of the US at the time. I also made a few calls on 52.525 simplex; although I could hear that someone else was there, I couldn’t make out who. Which is OK– now I know the antenna works and I have a means for getting it into an operational position. Next time, I’ll see if I can get the jpole into the top of the tree instead of only halfway up.
Which brings up a few thoughts I’ve had rattling around about amateur radio in general– the first being, why does “everyone” say that the first radio you buy should be a 2m(/70cm) radio? I know, there are way more repeaters on 2m and 70cm, but that doesn’t mean you talk to more people. I’ve taken my dualband HT to work and let it scan the local repeaters for days. 80% of the time there’s just nothing there. I drop my callsign out, and no one responds (even though I know there are people who scan the local machines all the time). Yes, I use 2m for ARES/RACES, and I used 70cm for storm tracking when I was doing that– so having that radio isn’t a wasted resource. But that radio (lately) is just a tool for doing something, rather than something to have fun with.
I didn’t buy a 6m radio to talk on the local repeaters. I bought a 6m rig for those days and nights when the band, due to -insert propagation type here- just freakin’ opens up. I don’t wish 6m was congested (like that’s gonna happen), but I do wish more of the techs in the world would check it out– part of the mystique of ham radio (for me) is that you can talk to people in far away places. I’m wondering if maybe we should be selling new hams on the 10m and 6m bands more, and the 2m and 70cm bands less– higher VHF and UHF are used for things like public safety because they provide reliable communications, which is a good thing– but it’s not usually all that exciting.
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