so its like 9pm local and ive been parked on 40m for the past hour just spinning the dial and honestly its kind of depressing tonight. heard a couple of guys ragchewing down around 7.250 but the noise floor here is just brutal right now, some kind of line noise from up the street i think. anyway not really a question just kind of venting i guess, this hobby has a lot of these nights where you just sit there and nothing really clicks. does anyone else get into that zone where you dont really want to make a contact but you dont want to turn the rig off either? its like comfort radio or something. my wife thinks im nuts sitting in the shack just listening but theres something about it i cant really explain to someone whos not into this stuff.

oh man yes, totally get this. some nights 40 is just wall to wall garbage and i end up drifting over to 80 where at least the local nets are going on. theres a tuesday night rag chew net a couple counties over i stumbled onto a few weeks back, nothing fancy just a few old timers talking about weather and grandkids but its weirdly nice background noise while im tinkering. your wife would probably still think its nuts lol but yeah theres definitely a comfort thing to it.

yeah 40 has been rough lately from my qth too. i wonder if its the season changing or just bad luck. also your comment about not wanting to turn the rig off — thats basically every night for me haha. sometimes i fall asleep in the chair and the radio is just going in the background. not recomending that but it happens