BANDS ARE DEAD?

CALL CQ!!!

Almost every day I hear operators saying the bands are dead. Most of them have panadapters and waterfalls - either built into their radios or through a third party device such as an RSP1A. These operators look at their displays and see a virtual flatline and determine visually that there's nothing going on.

The truth is, the panadapter and waterfalls can be amazing tools for finding signals (or gaps between signals) and I use one myself all the time, but on many occasions, the display doesn't always reflect what's actually going on.

In the absence of strong, outstanding signals, all you might see is a 'flat line' but down there at grass level there's often an abundance of weak signals that can be pulled out if you search for them like in the old days when there was no such thing as SDR 😃

BUT MOST OF ALL, instead of whinging about dead bands, why not bring the bands to life with a few CQ CALLS??

If you put out a few CQ calls of your own, hopefully someone will receive you and startup a QSO. And your activity may well promote even more activity. At least give it a go! And with modern radios it's soooo easy to record a CQ message (speech or morse) and re-transmit it over and over at the push of a button!

So come on guys, let's stop talking about dead bands and start doing something to breathe life into it. 70cm is the perfect example of it - so many people mock the lack of activity on 70cm but never actually call out on it or schedule a QSO on it.

Many modern radios are dual-banders and can monitor 2M and 70cm, so try calling CQ on 70 now and again and hopefully, all those dual-band operators who have 433.500 monitoring in the background will respond. And instead of telling a friend to meet up for a chat on 2M later tonight, ask them to try 70cm instead (if you're within range). And if you're not within range of each other at UHF, try using a 70cm Repeater for a change.

Use it or lose it they say.

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