[Phillip Beall (W5EBC)]

All,

I thought I posted this last night, but looking things over this morning I don’t see it.  If it turns into a double-post, my apologies.

In any case, yesterday I had the forums’ view counts pulled and ranked, mostly out of curiosity.  These are page loads, not unique people, and they accumulate for years, so I would not treat them as a popularity contest.  They are still useful for one thing: they show which threads keep getting opened.

A few of the high ones:

• The Infamous TYT TH-8600, and the TYT TH-UV88 — tips and tricks. (Dan, KB7JZI) — about 1,100 views
• The Master Channel Plan (For events and Emergency Operations) — about 880
• Rural Americans flocked to Elon Musk’s Starlink. Now some feel trapped. — about 690
• Meshtastic for EmComm on VHF/UHF — about 580
• Building The Double Bazooka — instructions and shopping list — about 400
• Summer Field Day 2024 — about 380

After that you get fox hunts, the Bonham bike rally, nets, and a few ragchew pieces.  Event threads do fine.  Net reminders do what they need to do and then fade.  To me that is about perfect, kind of as intended.

The one that made no sense at first was the TYT thread sitting at #1.  It is from June 2022.  It has three replies from two people. Nobody in the club has been arguing about TH-8600s for four years.  So why is it the most-opened thread on the site?

Because it is a how-to that answers questions people type into Google when they unwrap a cheap radio and the manual is useless.  Unlock the 8600 with LO + A/B on power-up. Unlock VFO on the UV88 with 7 + 1.  If the programming file goes corrupt, reset, unlock again, read the radio back, and rebuild.  Dan even got an email from a ham in Greece (SV0SGS) about the 8600 acting up after a CPS write.  That traffic is not Paris, Texas, the local area.  It is the internet finding a clear answer on our forum and bookmarking it.

The same pattern shows up on the channel plan, the Bazooka write-up, and the Meshtastic piece.  Reference material lasts. Meeting reminders do not.

So the takeaway is not “we need more view counts.”  It is: if you have a project, a programming trick, an antenna build, a go-box, a node, a powerpole setup, or a “I wish someone had written this down” moment — write it here, put the model or project name in the title, and leave it where the next guy can find it.  That is the content that keeps working after the meeting is over.

If you have one of those sitting in a notebook or a workbench photo folder, Educational and Digital Knowledge are waiting on it.

73,

Phillip Beall (W5EBC)

• This topic was modified 1 week, 4 days ago by Phillip Beall. Reason: Formatting
• This topic was modified 1 week, 4 days ago by Phillip Beall.

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