This coming Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, February 22,23 and 24, immediately following the morning “8:35 on the 805” Net we will all have an opportunity to gather information and gain an understanding of our ability to communicate on the 2-meter band without the aid of repeaters or the internet.
Whether you will be using a hand held or base station radio simply tune to 146.520 and use the following suggested protocol:
1. Listen for 30 to 60 seconds to see if you can hear any station calling “CQ, CQ, CQ this is [call sign].” 2. If you hear a station attempt to make contact by repeating the call sign of the station sending “CQ” and then providing your own call sign.
Log any station you hear as ‘heard’ or ‘contact’. If two stations are able to make contact continue to alternate making “CQ” calls for three to four minutes and log all those ‘heard’ or with whom you make a ‘contact’.
3. If after 60 seconds you do not hear any station go ahead and transmit your own “Is this frequency in use?” call and provide your call sign. If no one identifies themselves as using the frequency try calling “CQ” with your call sign every 30 seconds for three or 4 minutes.
That’s it!
After 5 minutes or so, you can QSY to the OMARC 805 repeater and join the QSO to share your results and find out who might have heard your transmission even if you did not make contact.
Whether or not you join the QSO PLEASE SHARE YOUR RESULTS IN THE COMMENT SECTION BELOW. We all learn from ‘Nothing Heard’ reports.
PLEASE REPORT THE EQUIPMENT AND THE TRANSMITTING POWER YOU USED DURING THE TEST.
The map on the left shows only a fraction of all the licensed amateur radio operators based in the Mid-Hudson.
The more we can learn about our 2-meter simplex communication capabilities the more robust and resilient will be our 'Plan B' should local repeaters and the internet be unavailable for a period of time.
All our welcome to participate!
Here is who I heard this morning on 146.52 in Hopewell Junction grid square FN31CO.
Being in lower Dutchess County I suspect I'm the southernmost station in the group.
I was using a Yaesu FT7900 running 50 watts into a Diamond X30A vertical antenna at 25 ft.
AC2KV
KD2MNR
AC2UQ
W2NDG
KB2UPZ
WE2FAT
AD2AH
73
WA2NYY
Thanks Mark. We'll be aggregating all your reports with others and posting summary info in the days to come.
I would say our 2m simplex capability is phenomenal and much better than we expected. I emailed my data to Paul.
Thanks Jeremy...your email arrived.
Paul Ac2uq reminded me that i had not submitted any results for the simplex test. the reason was that my results were poor and almost embarassing. I realize that the last time MBARC did this same simplex test, i was using a different radio. i believe my squelch setting are to tight. i have not been motivated to get the computer hooked to the radio to check that theory. more to follow
When it comes to science and experimenting, results are neither good nor poor. They just are. I once participated in ARRL field day with my FT60 ht. I called CQ for a long time from different locations. I made 2 contacts the entire weekend. Some would call that poor or a failure but I learned a lot about “height is might”. A success if you ask me.
Thanks Jim and Jeremy. QSL. Both your comments support ongoing testing, experimenting and learning.
With last summer's 'leaves on' results [downloadable on Home page see 'Download our RF Contact Matrix' and this past week's 'leaves off' test we now have two 'anchors' to use as a basis for future tests and testing protocols.
The more the merrier. Thanks for being involved and contributing!
All ideas, suggestions, comments most welcome.