In the last few weeks I have given my talk or presentation entitled “My VHF Journey” to two local radio clubs. This is a personal story explaining my starting out in amateur radio and how I came to enjoy mostly working VHF from my early days, and why I enjoy it now.
My primary interest is in working DX on 144MHz, 432 MHz and even 1296 MHz if conditions allow. I have quite a modest setup with regard to antennas as I do not have as much room or space for large arrays, but I do have an effective station for working VHF DX.
As a rule the club members have no idea what is available using SSB and CW on these bands. Their experience tends to be working FM simplex and repeaters on 2 and 70, and because of the licence changes new licensees have the freedom to use the HF bands, neglecting the opportunities to work any distance on the VHF bands. They are actually unaware or indeed ignorant of what they might achieve if they gave these bands a proper go with decent Yagi antennas. And no, these antennas do not have to be large. Mine aren’t.
I did my best to explain the joys of tropo, aurora and Sporadic E including the nature and the reasons these types of propagation occur.
Despite my best efforts I am not confident that my audiences understood or felt drawn to try the joys of working real radio at VHF. It is not even just about working the DX. Under flat conditions we can have quite long rag chews using SSB over distances much further than can be managed using FM.
It is not my place to tell any of my fellow radio amateurs what they should be doing, it is up to them However, after writing the presentation and speaking to the clubs I have the feeling I may failed to inspire anyone to have a go.
We had an interesting tropo event starting on 28th December and ending at my QTH on 30th. All QSOs were SSB. Conditions were very good to the East and North East, and good to the South and South West, but surprisingly from my QTH there was less propagation to the South East, so no HB9s etc. On 2 metres I used my newish IC9700 with 100 watts to my 7 element and on 70 cms my FT991 with 50 watts to a 13 element.
Amateur Radio News from Jon Stow, G4MCU 