Alan wrote:
"KØHB" writes:

I travel a lot, to large cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Tu
cson,
Kansas City, Indianapolis, Detroit, OKC, DFW, Tucson, Phoenix, Denver,
El
Paso/Las Cruces. It's the same everywhere. Just a scattering of sign
als on the
bands, but EVERY PAIR spoken for.

True. 10 - 15 years ago, they were busy. Now --- silent. It seems
that way
everywhere.

It's certainly that way in rural Minnesota. There are repeaters in many
of the small towns, and they're alive in the sense of being technically
there, but they're dead in the sense of anyone using them on a regular
basis. Sometimes there's a regular group who gets together in the
morning, but for our local repeater even that custom has faded away.

We lost our UHF repeater almost a year ago when the elevator it was on
was destroyed by lightning. [For you city slickers, the word "elevator"
out here in the sticks is used to describe a large structure in which
grain is stored.] That repeater is still silent. A new location was
secured, and funding for it was provided by the local emergency
management agency, but the antenna still hasn't been erected.

So I have to wonder, in metro areas where all the slots are "full", how
many of those repeaters actually exist and would respond if presented
with a correctly-toned signal on their published input frequency.
Perhaps more important, how many of them are used regularly? It might
actually make more sense to shut down several repeaters that don't have
a critical mass of users and move those small groups to the remaining
repeaters so that there was actually someone there to talk to. Better
to have two or three active repeaters in a metro area than a dozen dead
ones.

I don't know what took the interest away for everyone else. However,
with
nobody on to talk to, I am less interested in solving the problems in t
he car
to get on, so if others are in the same boat, we all contribute to the
silence.

It's a chicken and egg problem. I know that I'm contributing to the
problem; my 2-meter equipment consists of an HT, and I've considered
that I need to buy a "real" 2-meter rig and put up an antenna . . . but
it's difficult for me to justify the time and expense to do so when
there's no activity.

73, Steve KB9X