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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.
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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.