70cm / 2m band in the United States ~ with BAOFENG UV-5Rxx

BAOFENG UV-5Rxx

   I was watching 2m / 70cm bands with BAOFENG UV-5Rxx in San Francisco Bay area, so called "Silicon Valley".

   I used to have a license in Japan around 30 ~ 40 years ago.   I found out a similar people write a blog to resume amateur radio recently.  I am one of them.....

   Since I got a license in the US and I started looking for what type of transceivers are available in the market nowadays.   Before getting the license, I sometimes heard that the population who enjoy amateur radio is decreasing and the price for the equipment is increasing.   However, the price for entry model of HF transceiver is still less than USD $1000 and the price is a similar as when I stopped it.  The main difference is many models are combined with 50MHz (6m) with HF and there is no single band all mode transceivers for V/UHF.  Majority of V/UHF models are FM  transceivers.

   The one I just got is 144/430MHz hand held transceiver and I started watching those bands.

Band Plan in northern California

   The band plan in this area, northern California, 144~148 MHz and 420~450MHz.  However assignments for simplex FM is 26 channels in 2m band and only 3 channels in 70cm band.  The rest of assignments for FM is for repeaters for those bands.  I have never heard any QSO in simplex.  All QSOs I heard were through repeaters. 

   The other questions come up are where technician operators are.   Since they only allows above 10m bands excepts some CW bands in HF.   Therefore I thought majority of them are using V/UHF.  However, V/UHF FM bands are really quiet even if early evening and weekends.  Based on statistics, more than half of amateur radio stations are technician class.  I just wonder where they are.

   Thus, it seems that it is not easy to contact many stations in my local area.   Probably, I need to go to HF.  However, I might not be able to go HF any time soon.  Because it might be hard to setup HF antenna at home.   So I will continue to look for something in V/UHF.   It is probably all right to use it for a communication with my son during hiking.  Other than that, I am considering to check a local amateur radio clubs.