Where are the VK6's ??

[VK3YE]

Back in the day,prior to "Economic Rationalism",Wagin ,with a population of around 1600 (a guess,as it was a bit larger than the current 1427), had,just from the 6WA staff,around 3-4 Hams,with a floating population of 1-2 others.

One area that does seem active is Kellerberrin (pop 1000 approx).

In the last year I've heard VK6s WF, APZ and FUN (on HF) from around there.

[VK2AAH]

If people are going to try and determine the degree of activity by postcode, repeat that for the Sydney metro area. I don't understand why VK6s are being singled out for statistical analysis when they probably face the same hurdles we all do- time, family, real estate constraints etc.

The funny thing is that given my current circumstances I would probably be deemed "inactive" yet I'll be camped out at a cold radio site on the 20th fighting to find a spare frequency on 160m... what is activity to some is of no interest to others, what is inactivity to some is all the time others can spare. It is a hobby after all...

And the ruddy hobby is NOT dying. The constant pessimism drives me nuts. What it is doing is evolving- and it has been doing it since Maxim's time. I remember reading articles (not at the time they were written....) expressing concern that AR may not return after World War 2. Lots of licence holders lost to the hobby, but new ones appeared. The technology changed, practices changed, but the hobby lived on.

Cheers

Richard
VK2AAH

[VK6ZGO]

Well,I suppose it's fair enough,as it is on "144 & 432".

VK6 is about as far as you " T'other siders" are going to get on 2m & still be in Oz!

I'd dearly love to have a contact with Leigh over the Bight,but even if I had anything set up,I'm very unlikely to do it from Perth.
I'm not moving to Albany or Esperance----it's cold enough in Perth,right at the moment!!

I think the depopulation of the country towns must have affected all of the country,but it seems to have struck
particularly hard in WA.
Even the mining towns are FIFO now,so they don't have that much of a long term population.

[VK6LD]

...That's a significant change over a year.

Lou, amateur radio is literally dieing of old age.
And it's happening on our watch.

Having dug a bit, I present the following rough 'n ready research.

So how many VK6's are really active?
How could this be measured?

Well, as crude as this is, I am using the search results from DX Summit for 2013 YTD.
(And we all know what we are dealing with, when it comes to spots on open clusters. )

VK6-2013.txt

Now, when I import that into an Excel Spreadsheet, and sort on VK6 callsign, and remove repeaters, beacons, and obvious idiotic entries, I get 119 unique VK6's spotted so far in 2013.
Yep, only 119 in the entire state of Western Australia so far this year.

VK6-2013.xls

The ACMA database doesn't allow a VK6* wildcard search, so I don't know how many VK6 hams are licensed, and therefore calculate a suitably rough % figure on real activity.
Even without doing that, real activity appears to be alarmingly low.

Now extrapolate that across the rest of the country.

My guestimate of 2,000 active hams may even be too generous?

Hi Adam,

Good work in extracting all the information in the spreadsheet, however I noted only 1 VK6 Foundation callsign in it... I can probably nominate at least 20 or 30 active F calls in WA on HF & VHF/UHF bands. By active I mean I hear them at least once every 1-2 weeks on air.

Whilst the spreadsheet is probably a good indicator of the VK6's working DX, it is probably no more accurate than the WIA Callbook or ACMA licence statistics when it comes to measuring activity as a whole.

My callsign was in the spreadsheet just once, but I certainly have QSO's on HF at least 1-2 times per week minimum, sometimes several dozen if the bands are open as well as local contacts on 2M & 70CM FM or SSB. Plus I maintain an APRS I-Gate, a 70cm repeater and look after websites & mailing lists for 2 clubs, plus participate in forums such as VK Logger.

The question is, just how do you measure or quantify activity...?

Cheers,

Rob...
VK6LD