Nate, Where I live, (and every place I have lived,) the 2m band was not crowded with users, only with repeaters. Most repeaters sit idle most of the time, and the more popular machines almost never cool off between 6am and 9pm.
There's a waiting list for repeater pairs, but there's never a wait to find an open machine for a QSO. Personally, I believe that without dirt-cheap 2m radios, we might have lost part of the band years ago. We don't achieve anything close to what the commercial world (and by extension the FCC) considers "crowded." 73, Paul, AE4KR ----- Original Message ----- From: Nate Duehr To: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2007 11:20 AM Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] Re: 10 meter desense help, split site, high noise floor. On Dec 25, 2007, at 11:50 AM, Paul Plack wrote: > Keith, we're also stuck with band-planning on other bands which > didn't anticipate the popularity of FM repeaters. 2m is even more > screwed up. Why have only 600 kHz offset, when it could have easily > been double that? Duplexers would have been smaller, less expensive, > worked better, etc. I think 2m is screwed up mostly because manufacturers keep making radios that are virtually loss-leaders for the band. When you can buy a 2m 50W mobile for right around $150, and it's $400 to get into a dual-bander... well, do the math. I think the manufacturers are just as responsible for the overcrowding of VHF as anything. Perhaps they should stop doing ultra-cheap VHF rigs and start doing cheap UHF only rigs. Or 220. Or 900. Or 1.2 GHz. (Yeah, see how silly that sounds? They're not going to.) -- Nate Duehr, WY0X [EMAIL PROTECTED]
