CQ fatigue…
I’ve seen it written somewhere that many receivers don’t make for a busy band. What this means is that if everyone is listening, scanning the bands for stations, no contacts will result. Someone somewhere has to call CQ to initiate a contact (for non amateur radio types a ‘CQ call’ is a ‘hello…is there anybody out there’ invitation to other stations to reply and establish a contact, or QSO).
With that in mind I have over the past week made many CQ calls (different bands, different modes) in attempts to make some contacts on otherwise quiet bands. My results were a bit disappointing to say the least. I managed to work a clutch of close-in European stations (from Germany and Spain) but apart from that I was calling in vain - hence my title for this post - ‘CQ fatigue’.
Now I know my antenna isn’t great (but I am resigned to living with it until I can think of some ingenious alternative) and I know conditions aren’t at their best (although they have been a bit variable over the week), but is it really THAT bad, that in hours of callling CQ I get so few replies? It’s been that bad I have even dared venture onto 50MHz yesterday (2 contacts) and 144MHz this afternoon (no contacts)! I hope things improve soon.