Just like the propagation, my own levels of activity on the radio has been sporadic over the last few years. I was off the air from 2012 until October 2016 and then went off again in April of 2017.
At the start of 2018, my interest was renewed and I have managed to stay on for all of 2018. These are probably the main highlights of 2018 for me.
January 2018... DMR
In January of 2018, I purchased a DMR handheld radio and explored the world of digital radio. Between making up my own code plugs and using the radio, it has been interesting over the last year learning about the system.
April 2018... VHF Activity Nights
At the start of the year, it was very obvious that the levels of activity on the VHF bands in Ireland was very low. It seemed that it would make a lot of sense to try and have particular activity nights where there might be a better chance of making contacts.
I approached the IRTS to ask that they would help publicise activity nights on the Tuesdays of each month which they duly did in their publications and on their website. This became the
EI VHF Activity Nights in April of 2018 and it has been a modest success to date.
After 6 months, we did a review of the activity net in Cork and this was refined to become the
Cork VHF Net. This has certainly resulted in more activity locally in Cork on several VHF bands which is welcome.
April 2018... 40 MHz
When the IRTS announced at the start of the year that there would be new allocations at 40 and 60 MHz, it really grabbed my interest. There was however very little information to the found. To remedy this, I set up
a special page on this site for all 40 MHz information so that others could find out about the band. By the end of 2018, it had been looked at 776 times according to the website stats.
May 2018... FT8
Since the start of May 2018, I have been monitoring FT8 signals on 28 MHz for most of the time and feeding the reception reports up to the PSK Reporter website. At the height of the Sporadic-E season, I was uploading about 6,000 to 8,000 reports per week.
For me as such, it was very low maintenance and required very little of my time. The radio just listened on the FT8 frequency on 28 MHz and I just checked the PC from time to time. Checking what I had heard out of curiosity was the difference between having the radio turned on or having it turned off completely.
Website Traffic...
The year ended with the website getting about 6,000 page views for the month of December. There are some spam clicks buried in amongst those so the number of real click is probably around 5,000. In the second half of 2018, the site has been getting between 4,000 and 10,000 page views per month.
And for 2019???
I'm not exactly sure but probably all of the above. I was reading another blog recently when I saw something which pretty much sums up the reality for a lot of radio amateurs.
Many people are just more interested in experimentation rather than communication. Making a contact on the HF bands like 20m is no real challenge as is talking on a local repeater. A lot of people just want to experiment. To try out new bands, modes or new equipment. To build something rather than just use a black box. I'd guess that experimentation is the one facet of the hobby that is likely to keep me interested in the future.
