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Activity breeds activity: or the difference your CQ can make
14 June 2012 | by When I’m mobile with the FT8900, I generally have one of the VFOs on one of the local repeaters and the second one scanning about 40 channels for activity. This morning, the scanning stopped on 145.500 and I heard G4APL/M call CQ.
It’s fairly rare for me to hear a simplex CQ on 145.500, so after a quick bit of button pressing, I called Paul G4APL/M. It turned out that he was on the A40 between Witney and Burford, some 15 miles away from me. We had a good QSO, with signals getting weaker as I approached Abingdon.
I signed with Paul and was pleased to be called by Alan, G3SLI in Wootton near Abingdon. I occasionally work Alan on 70MHz FM and it had been quite a while since we spoke. I got the impression speaking to Alan that he hadn’t made too many QSOs recently – so a bit of simplex activity was welcome. We could also hear that Paul, G4APL/M was working a portable station closer to him in Burford on another frequency. I told Alan that I’d come across his callsign in connection with his activities frrom Gibraltar on 70MHz in the early 1960s when I was looking at Mike, G3JVL’s QRZ page the other day. A really nice QSO with Alan, talking about aerials and VHF propagation.
It struck me that unless Paul had made his CQ on 145.500 – those great QSOs wouldn’t have happened. A great reminder that activity really does breed activity and that I should call CQ on simplex myself more often!
One Response to “Activity breeds activity: or the difference your CQ can make”
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I am in total agreement with you on this, here in the states, I when driving always monitor 146.52 simplex and call from time to time if anyone is around and most times I can drum up someone who was monitoring but afraid to be the first to call or thought maybe no one was on so why bother.Same on the bands sometimes on 10 meters the band is seemingly dead but calling CQ all of a sudden the band is alive with activity just because nobody thought to call first.