I do not think I am unrealistic by claiming that our cherished Radio Amateur hobby has ceased to attract our youngsters, all due to the expansion and "popularization" of the Internet.
Radio amateurs may soon become new "dinosaurs".
The Internet, a global-access network, has successfully erased our exotic sentiment from overseas shortwave communication. It has become quite rare in amateur shortwave bands, to see the old-style daily traffic of opportune communications.
Although the reality looks sad to us, the remaining "competitive" radio amateurs enjoy a number of attractive contests, some communicating in VHF, UHF and microwave bands, testing new modes of operation, and new gadgets. The majority of today's radio-amateur activities falls into the first category. There is only a quite small number of radio amateurs who are able to operate above 1296 MHz, during contests or else. The vast majority is active at 144 and 432 MHz , where good equipment and antennas are available. For the microwave bands, the availability of reasonably-priced equipment is highly limited, and experts having access to microwave test equipment are also rare.
The situation is not significantly affected even by the top-notch products and kits by DB6NT. Before one can reach for a key or a microphone to start at a microwave band, there are still many obstacles to overcome.
The BTV company, OK2's ER, MMO, VLT and BNG decided to resolve this microwave dilemma. They have created and are marketing a set of microwave outdoor transverters integrated with antennas (OTA). These new outdoor transverter/antennas (OTAs) utilize 30 or 60-cm parabolic antennas, the hardware comes factory-adjusted and fully tested. By simply connecting this OTA with one's UHF TRX via a "reasonably" long ( tens of meters) coaxial cable, even technical laymen can easily start operating at microwave bands.
The authors are sure that their new OTAs will allow many radio amateur contest enthusiasts to operate from their "fire-places" provided they are located at a suitable QTH. The new OTA design is expected to substatially improve the availability of microwave technology, to expand radio-amateur activities into "higher" bands.
By this contribution, microwave activities will become more common even beyond the annual contests.
OK2ER
Translation from Czech by Jiri, OK1-5037.
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