Well, that’s the way I look at it now. I listened in to the sparse activities in PA land for a while, using a Yaesu VR-5000 connected to a Diamond discone. Not the best receiver ever, nor the best antenna, but adequate to get an impression of the behavior of this band.
The rather pathetic performance of this setup started to annoy me quickly though. I picked up a Wouxun KG-816 (sorry, no plans for a in-depth review, unless readers are interested), which does a much better job than the Yaesu. Now I’m in the process of constructing a better antenna. Material salvaged from an old CB antenna is used for that. If all goes well, these remains will be converted to a 5/8 wave vertical for 4 meters.
The Wouxun KG-816L. Ignore the generic box, the ‘L’ version spans 66-88MHz.
So far it seems to be a nice band, especially for local QSO’s. Besides the locals I picked up some activity from Spain an Italy also, mostly in SSB. The Wouxun is FM only, but hey, you can’t have everything.
