Why are repeaters more quiet than they used to be?

 

I'm seeing a LOT of folks asking where the traffic for Repeaters has gone. 

First let me say that, yes, the traffic is down some from the 70s to the early 90's but there's still traffic out there.

I had a 2/70 rig in my truck but took it out for a few months, but took it out for a while for a couple reasons not having anything to do with Ham Radio. More recently, I re-installed my little 779 UV into the truck again because of the fact that I was headed for Dayton Ohio for. Hamvention. Being the lazy slug that I am I just never bothered taking it out. Rather I started programming repeaters for the areas that I go into across five different states.

I'm glad I didn't take it back out because I have begun to discover the joys of hitting some of the local repeaters in the places that I normally go to. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware.

Some of these repeaters are what I will call single Spike machines. In other words, they only have one signal, or perhaps they're a UHF and VHF combination from the same Hill.  Those are usually fun, although sometimes you're going to find that there really isn't that much traffic on them. Other days you will find the there's a network going on and you get a taste for some of the local people and that's usually worthwhile. You can usually jump in after the net is over and get some nice ragchew.

I have begun to develop a serious appreciation for the linked repeaters, configured in wide area networks, however. These are kind of like the well-known East Coast Reflector. I happened to cross one going through Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania yesterday that I initially thought was a single spike. Turns out it was anything but, having (I was told)  something like 80 different repeaters spread across the country, all tied together. I was fascinated to learn that,and I enjoyed a conversation between one individual in San Francisco and the other in Washington DC, and myself. All with my little 20 watt radio in the middle of Pennsylvania.

My recent exposure to FM repeaters from around the northeast leads to a few conclusions on the question of why we are seeing less traffic these days. I've seen the blame being put on PL tones (of all things!) claims of "distracted driving", the fact that cars are getting harder to find a place to mount antennas...(I've had problems with that, myself the last couple cars) I've seen folks blaming Chinese radios...(though getting them to describe just why is a bit of a challenge). I've seen folks mention that it's the users who often simply aren't very welcoming.... but that's also true on HF in places. I've seen folks blame cell phones... but let's face it, most people on cell phones aren't hams anyway. Frankly, I don't put much stock in these explanations.

As a result of my being an SWL who spent a fair amount of time monitoring local machines in my youth... and the more recent experience as well, I have a few observations to offer to explain the complaints.

 1: The butter is being spread over too much bread:

Back in the real heyday of the repeaters, early '60s and through the 70s up to say, 1990 or so, the number of repeaters active was relatively small and as a result a lot of the traffic was concentrated on to a relatively small number of active "channels". I would compare that to about 10 or 15 years ago on CB where a lot of the traffic on that bad graduated to channel 19. Ostensibly, 19 was supposed to be a trucker's channel but in eventually developed into some place where there was always some kind of traffic. Repeaters of the 70s through the 90s saw the same phenom, where traffic generates traffic. If you know that there is going to be people someplace speak with, you're going there.  Its the place to be. While it's true that there are less people overall that are active on repeaters it's also true that the numbers that remain are spread out amongst a much larger number of machines thus increasing the chances that when you land on one of them you're not going to hear anything going on and eventually you're going to turn the knob.

Part of the problem too, is the number of different modes that one can work on repeaters these days. When everybody was on analog it was a lot easier to find traffic. Add a half dozen incompatible digital voice modes and the number of people in active conversation dwindles.

2: Sunspots:

No, I'm serious. We're in the middle of a very good sunspot cycle and the HF bands have for the most part been cooking. I can tell you that I personally have been spending a good deal of time on HF, chasing root squares and DXCC. This takes away from the repeater traffic, too.... and it's natural that this happens. In fact it's been going on for Decades... Sunspots come in, and all the cool kids move to HF. And who can blame them?

 

3: Rudeness:

KC8VWM rightly says that people complain when there's too much activity occurring on a repeater.... and of course now we see people complain when there's no activity occurring on a repeater. He recounts his own experience:  "I remember when stations would come on asking (complaining?) the users to clear the frequency and leave the repeater open for others to use. And after they got chased off as requested, not a single person used the repeater for hours after that."  

And yeah, I've heard the same thing, myself.

4:Jammers: 

They're pretty much a universal issue, anymore. Just about every city has them. It's ssad to see, but not much can really be done about it.Let's say you manage through some coordinated effort to localte the source. I have my doubts that much will be done by the commission. Consider: People have been complaining to the commission about 7.ZOO for years now. Get the picture?

 Not a one of these factors is individually conclusive. Rather, I suggest that they are cumulative. That is to say none of these factors of themselves have left us in our current situation, but add 'em up, and what you see is what you get.

OK enough of the complaints.
I speculate the these things  are going to happen that will bring traffic back to FM repeaters:

Rebound 1:
In about 5 years, the current sunspot cycle will settle back down and the currently hopping HF bands will mostly be ghost towns again, particularly the shorter bands like 10 m. That will cause of itself a fairly significant uptick in repeater traffic.

Rebound 2:  

Next we will see a push forward some kind of standardization of digital voice modes. I suggest that  thus far digital voice modes have been proprietary black boxes. The company is involved with creating those black boxes are not going to be cheerful about giving them up for a different standard so this one may take a while and will most likely come from the ham radio community itself not one of the manufacturers such as Icom or Yaesu. Instead it will come from an independent developer or a developer that is adapted at open standard and modified it for the purpose such as was done with FT-X.

Rebound 3:

 The wide area networks that I mentioned earlier will also aid in getting traffic going. I'm afraid that the RF only purists aren't going to like it much, but WANs like EchoLink,  AllStar, and so on are going to be more than any other Factor responsible for making repeaters active again, particularly amongst younger hams who are just getting into the hobby.

"You mean I can get on my little 5 watt walkie-talkie that I paid $30 for and talk to somebody across the country?"

Yeah it's going to be like that.

And finally there is this.

Rebound 4:
You're not going to see what's at the bottom of the pot until you stir the soup. Toss your call out there and see what happens. All these other factors I've spoken of are long-term factors and won't see fruition for months or years. The best short-term Factor is just hitting the key and letting your voice be heard

It is surprising I think when you understand how much of our amateur radio activity is driven by habit. Well, get into the habit of stirring the pot. Toss your call out there.

Bonus Rebound:

Club activity. Many of the repeaters I've been active on here in the northeast, are club machines which are used by the club and it's members to keep informational and social lines open. Make no mistake here, folks... the weekly nets for each club is great but making a concerted effort to keep the lines of communication open even when ite weekly net is not in session is beneficial. Make the repeater the place where your members, ...as well as outsiders... WANT to be.

6m? Oh, wow....

I haven't spent much time on 6m, mostly because I was convinced my IMAX wasn't working well there. Oh, I could get it to load up, but I never got responses when I called CQ, even using FT8.The numbers work out a couple different ways but my guess at this point is that I'm losing about 9bd in the tuner for 6m.

Today, in the midst of the NAVHF things changed. I happened to pass by 6m this morning and decided I'd see about passing out some points, to a few of the locals, even though I'm not really competing. What I found amazed me....

 The band must be super hot this morning for me to get those kind of reports.

I guess I should see about getting a better antenna for 6m.

Looking at the world through a windshield

Some of you don't know this abouyt me, so.....  I spent many years in the Broadcast business. from there I went into computer support for about 10 years. From there, I started driving truck.... and it's what I do now.

My home away from home

This where I spent the vast majority of my time. It's a 2020 Freightliner Cascadia. Without question, it is best I've ever had. 

I think it LOOKS killer. The Black on Black with that livery is a standout. You might pick up I'm rather proud of it...Let's just say the company treats me VERY well, and this is one result of that.

 

Got the biggest Detroit DD15 engine they make, (505hp,1750 ft lb tq) an DT12, 12 speed automatic, and all the bells and whistles... adaptive cruise, blind spot radar. Disk brakes.(Rare even today for a tractor trailer to have disc brakes.)

Got a huge amount of battery available.. I could start Frankenstein with this thing. .(four glass mat batteries under my drivers seat, four more under the back porch) which means the HVAC can run on the battery for over 12 hours. When it runs out of battery the truck starts itself and charges the battery. Got a complete kitchen, (grill, microwave, coffee maker, fridge/freezer) 19" flat screen TV, the 2/70 and the CB.... Top line stereo. Got 470,000 miles on it, give or take.

Trust me.... I'll be sorry to let it go when the time comes.

  And my Ham radio contacts are a big deal in this thing. It's apparently less of a rarity than it used to be to have an active ham driving truck but still raises eyebrows. In my two trips to Xenia, I've run across more than a handful to fellow drivers on.520, and I'm making friends all over the north east, where I run. I'm getting to be a regular on a couple of Harrisburg systems,, for example I run NY, PA, NJ,MD etc, so if you're in those states you might just hear me....

Quit with the Kenwood rumors, will ya?

I can't tell you how many times I've heard the Rumor being spread that Kenwood is thinking about leaving the Ham Radio business. I've been hearing this stuff long before I even got my tech a few years ago.Well, I have several comments 'bout that.

No, they're not. They've been here for around 60 years and with good reason, and with nothing at all to suggest they're going anywhere.

Indeed comparatively speaking, the indications are quite the opposite.

Consider MFJ who (sadly) pulled out of Hamvention mere hours after making their announcement about folding their Starkville manufacturing operation. Kenwood, on the other hand, was at Xenia and from what I saw there, they made a great showing. They've got the new D75 out. Looks killer, and apparently is selling well. The 590SG, TS890 and TS990 are still out there and also going well.

OK, it's not their biggest type of sales... the commercial and public safety markets are more lucrative, certainly. at least on a per unit basis.But you know what's keeping them doing well in that market? Ham radio.

The TS 990

No, I'm not kidding. 

Most people responsible for installing Commercial and Public Service radio, particularly Mobile, are also Hams. It is a natural extension of their profession. Kenwood understands this.

Look, I'm no Kenwood loyalist, ( I tend to Yaesu.... so shoot me)... but even I recognize that Kenwood Ham radios create a kind of brand loyalty that you're seldom going to find among commercial installers and maintainers. The guy who carries a D74, or has one of the TS HF rigs for example, is far more likely to recommend an NX3200 (again for example) for his current project.

Ham radio, therefore is the loss leader, used for promoting the commercial and public service lines. Kenwood, long ago, recognized there would be no commercial/public service wing of the company without the foundational and stellar reputation they have enjoyed in Ham Radio. It's in their best interests to remain in the Ham Radio Field.

Can we put this rumor to bed, now? Please?

Finally, the ARRL starts answering the LOTW questions

We heard from newington, today and it's exactly as I predicted.

Updated 6/4/2024

On or around May 12, 2024, ARRL was the victim of a sophisticated network attack by a malicious international cyber group. ARRL immediately involved the FBI and engaged with third party experts to investigate.

This serious incident was extensive and categorized by the FBI as “unique,” compromising network devices, servers, cloud-based systems, and PCs.

ARRL management quickly established an incident response team. This has led to an extensive effort to contain and remediate the networks, restore servers, and staff are beginning the testing of applications and interfaces to ensure proper operation.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as our staff continue to work through this with an outstanding team of experts to restore full functionality to our systems and services.

We will continue to update members as advised and to the extent we are able.​

So, they hacked the routers, as I said. They know the systems Newington employs has a great deal of front-end to back-end traffic, and crippling that traffic would cancel the show completely.

I still say this attack smacks of some inside information. International Cyber Group?  I have my doubts, which would seem to be confirmed by the timing of the attack. I mean,does anyone not understand the significance of WHEN all this went down.... a couple days before Dayton?

 Interesting that they're saying"Updating members" when the majority of LOTW's users are NOT members. I've addressed this one previously, so not point in re-hashing it other than confirming it.

Anyway, as someone else said:

From a public relations standpoint, I wish we had seen a statement like this earlier. It would have curbed some of the “specubation.”

 Yes, it would have, and frankly, I fail to understand how Newington's silence helps the FBI in any way.   I must also say I'll be shocked if there's actually any arrests over this.

AI and Ham Radio

 One of the hotter topics on the Ham Radio forums (and in a few places, on the air) has been AI, and how it will (and has been) intersecting with Ham Radio.

Most consider it to be somewhere off in the distant future. I disagree. If you think about it we've already got AI to a large degree. Identifying signals? Grid tracker and CW skimmers, we have.  Nobody's coughed up signal identifiers for the phone modes yet but with voice recognition coming along the way it is I can't imagine that's too far off either.  Signal processing? We already have some really serious advances in noise abatement the last few years. I've had my 991a for a few years now and it's still amazes me with its noise reduction capabilities.

Oh, you mean transmitter signal processing? In other words making the most out of your transmitted signal? Yeah we have that too. (Though I still like using the analog processors that I have)  Automated logging? Again we have that in the digital modes but not in the voice modes as yet.

I'm not quite sure what else could come out of AI for amateur radio but if you think about it that's what innovation is... Going beyond most other people's imagination.

That said, there seems no end of comments about it. 

Many seem concerned that AI will ruin Ham radio. In response, I will make the observation that any new technology that comes down the pike is going to be at least partially destructive to the technology that it builds on. Or, at least it will cause some change of direction of the technology it builds up. That is simply the nature of technology.

It seems to me that the question before us then is do we reject newer technology because it's a change from the old? We see a LOT of that going on in Ham radio today. The Digi modes, for example. 

Now, of course, we've seen this happen with every new advancement in tech on the bands. I've already cited in the past the tussle 50 years ago, over AM vs SSB.

Here's a question: What exactly IS AI? At what point do we cross over from automated processes to artificial intelligence? Where is the exact demarcation point?

To put a human spin on it, people entering higher education all have different levels of intelligence and most have different areas in which that intelligence shines.  But here it is.... intelligence is foundational.  The educational process meanwhile is a process of programming, in my view.  What passes as Artificial intelligence, at least for now, is naught but programming, not intelligence. You know why they don't put legs on computers? Because they'd walk off a cliff if you told them to. We've not yet reached the point where a computer with legs would be intelligent enough to recognize the danger, and want to survive.

There needs be a level of intelligence in the case of humans for programming to work. Computers don't have that, yet, if they ever will

Certainly, there will be more advances in this area.... there always are, despite the Ham who assert that it's not ham radio without a CW key and a couple of 6146 tubes.  But until we get some better definitions going on what AI actually IS, we can't really hang a label on ANY of it.