AA blessing or a curse?

I got on the air for a bit yesterday to play around on 10 Meters. It was wide open and was buzzing with ARRL DX Contest activity. I only stayed on long enough to work about a dozen foreign countries, all with 5 Watts,of course. After that, I went POTA hunting for a bit.

When the bell tolled midnight UTC, the bands once again became very, very quiet. Almost like a ghost town. The activity during the contest reminded me of my Novice days and even my early days as a General. Back then, it was very often hard to find a vacant spot on which to call CQ. It was not uncommon for there to be wall to wall, shoulder to shoulder stations occupying the bands, on an everyday basis! Not just during the weekends or during contests.

Sadly, it's not that way anymore. I'm going to post a query here that will undoubtedly be unpopular, but I have to wonder if a contributing factor may be the rise of waterfall displays, band scopes, panadapters or whatever you want to call them.

My thought process is like this. Joe Ham turns on his rig. He goes to, let's say 15 Meters. His panadapter shows flatline, no activity to speak of, so he goes to another band, or worse yet turns off the rig.

How many guys are looking at the same picture? All of them assuming there's no one out there, listening? Nobody's there that I can see, so why should I waste my time calling CQ?

Just a thought. Maybe, just maybe we were better off in the days when we would twiddle the dial hunting for someone to work, just calling CQ when we didn't hear anybody.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP- When you care to send the very least!