Last night I was the 50th check in on one of the 5 local repeaters that I normally check in with. There are more several I've not tried yet. I see some discussions about a lack of activity in some areas but seems like a lot here. I've only been licensed since February but I'm regularly hearing people with calls newer than mine checking in. I imagine it's just a regional thing as far as amount of use.

That's awesome. I'm envious.

How many people are on at non-net times though? Nets are the best place to make sure your radio is still working/making it to that repeater, if you can't set up a 2nd radio outside of desense range & record your test transmissions.

Yep, I see a ton of folks saying 2m is 100% dead...

In my area I have over a dozen I can reach with a very modest antenna setup.

If I could get a few more db of gain and another 20'  I think I could really reach a bunch more and do better on the simplex nets...

2m is Fun!

Getting into repeaters is easy. But the crickets drown you out.

The VHF scene is completely dead around here.

There are a few weekly nets in my area but the repeaters are mostly dead.  I think they did it to themselves by linking all the repeaters into a regional network and then discouraging ragchews to keep the network open for important traffic (there never is any).

If there are any isolated off-network repeaters I'm missing maybe that's where the action is.  But I don't think I missed any of them when programming my radios.

Emcomm folks sometimes can be killjoys.

I think it was here that someone posted or had a link theorizing that the proliferation of repeaters caused a lot of it due to people spreading out. Which I'd believe. We aren't that big of an area here, 300k or so regionally and maybe a couple hundred active amateurs. That's probably pushing it too. Yet we have a dozen or more repeaters.

There is one repeater in my area I can get into, and there is only one guy that is semi normal from what I can tell

My advice to new hams, get your general! There is a whole lot more to Ham radio than repeaters

+1000

The fun is on HF

South east linked repeater  net lasted 1.5hrs last night. It was terrible.


Here is my broadcastify link to my repeaters along with many local machines and simplex calling frequencies.

When 10m is open you maybe able to hear yourself down here.

Feed Link( it has about a 1min delay)

Decent amount of 2m and 70cm repeater traffic around here, as well as a couple GMRS repeaters.  

Around 7PM here there's nets on at least two repeaters almost every day. Pretty dead during the day, though.

Amusingly, thanks to multiple survival groups in my area, even MURS is busy about 4 days a week after dinner.

GMRS seems a little more active during the day than VHF ham.

Call CQ on the repeater,,,, even better if you identify and call CQ using Morse code

I live in a small rural county that barely rates a Walmart.  You could probably fit every licensed ham in the whole county in one classroom.  

There used to be a 440 repeater connected to the Cactus Intertie that I could hear, but it was a closed repeater at the time so I didn't program it.  It was fairly active though.  Now you tune to that frequency and it's dead air.  I don't know if the repeater is connected to Cactus anymore.  

The biggest town, the county seat, has a repeater on a hilltop right in the middle of town that is connected to the network in spite of there being good coverage to other repeaters in the network on mountaintops surrounding the valley.  I always thought that one should be a stand alone ragchew repeater but it's not.

It might also have something to do with the frequency coordinator giving preference to networked repeaters when issuing frequency pairs. (Just guessing at that one.)

All I know is I wish there was lively conversation on a local repeater.  Maybe I need to download some scanner software for my RTL-SDR and just see what pops up.

I can't complain too bad though because the dearth of conversation on VHF/UHF was a big part of my motivation to upgrade to general for HF, and I would not be having nearly as much fun if I hadn't.

Networks are neat. They really are. But if someone it connecting the only repeaters then discouraging traffic to keep it open for these networks then that's no fun.

There's a 440 one here connected to a network but it's not a emcomm thing at all. I've IDed but haven't gotten anyone but I've listened and it's decently busy during commute times with guys just chit chatting. They play trivia on Friday nights. That's fun.

All the others are mostly silent save for a few that have some folks at drive times. If I'm in the shack I have the busiest, relatively speaking, on and listening to answer folks and I will ID also.

I agree on the HF. I can see how folks get Tech, don't hear much or get answered and just kinda fade away. You add to it a club or clubs who aren't real friendly and you end up with folks walking. Thankfully most everyone around here are super friendly. A few assholes. But they're easily ignored. About the only thing I've ever seen is age related. I'm in my early 40s and young by a long shot around here. They're still nice and all. Just not a lot of overlap of stuff. I'm married, still work and have younger kids. They're all retired, some are widowers, kids are grown and my age so on. I've had to back off from
participating in some stuff just because stuff may change for me at a moments notice.

Some of the younger guys fade off because a lot of the older guys have done most of the interesting stuff already. So getting a club involved is hard. I just go do it on my own now. No hard feelings either. I get it. When I would bring stuff up if it was just kinda brushed off. Which I get, it isn't new or fun to them anymore. I've tried to get some of the younger guys into some stuff. Some like it, some don't. That's okay too. It isn't for everyone. But I can absolutely see how clubs are dying and the hobby is slowing. I don't think it's dead or even close to it.

The repeaters are busy here in the evenings, but there are three VHF simplex frequ that are quite busy all the time. My county uses 146.52 and another specific frequ all day (farm dudes mostly)

Monitoring 146.52 i will hear something within an hour

There is a lot of testing groups here, repeater nets and simplex net. There are also VHF data nets

Some of the fun is on HF,

Some is on 50/ 144/ 220/ 440/ 900/ 1200 and Microwave. Some is only CW, some is digital modes, some is APRS, GMRS, FRS, some is even Frankly Tedious 8, etc.

A few years ago, I had taken my radio and a mobile 2m antenna with me on a trip to Reno. They had a set of linked repeaters just due to terrain. They had a lunch-time net every day at noon. Usually had 5 or 6 people check in and chit-chat. The repeater was also active for rush hour. Folks would give traffic reports as well as other things like road construction delays, etc. Seemed like a very active 2M scene there. Back in Virginia, there were half a dozen repeaters and other than nets, there wasn't much traffic. You could stir up some traffic easily enough and then folks who had been quiet would come out of the woodwork to talk.