Essen has about 580,000 inhabitants but there are not more than 500 OM's and (X)YL's. We have three local clubs: L05, L10 and L11; I am member of the so-called OV L05 -Essen-.

Probably all operating modes are represented more or less intensively as everywhere depending upon preference and interest . I estimate that the majority of the radio amateurs is mainly active on the VHF/UHF bands, due to the tightness in a large city such as Essen and the problems to mount large antennas. Also for this reason the local clubs maintain club stations, in order to be able to transmit in all radio operating modes. For the radio operation in FM there are serveral repeater available:
2m (DB0WE 145. 6500 RV52 JO31LJ Essen)
70cm (DB0NA 439. 750 RU726 JO31LJ Essen)
23cm (DB0QR 1298. 3750 RS15 JO31LJ Essen).

Who likes packet radio can connect DB0GOS on the following frequencies:

1k2: 438.500 kHz (Shift -7.600)
9k6: 439.950 kHz (Shift -7.600).

Most packet users are activ in 9k6 now.
There are attainable still further Digis such as DB0OE (438.25 Simplex) in Oberhausen, DB0WTS (RX 438.325 Shift -7.600) in Wattenscheid or DB0RDX (438.275 Simplex) in Recklinghausen.

Some OM's (as me, hi) have been infected by the " TCP/IP fever " and used the Digi DB0QS in Dinslaken, but since DB0QS has gone QRT the tcp/ip activities strongly decreased in our area.

Who this reads via packet radio and TCP/IP will probably operate with PC Flexnet under Win95 or with Linux . I used here Windows 3.11. How to make WWW of over Waves with Windows (3.11) you can see at DL9NEC's description in the following guidance (still the german version).

The following link card is a reference sensitive diagram with information about the net and digis around my city (still the german version).