Congratulations! I’ve held an Advanced ticket since 1993 (got my no-code “Tech Minus” in 1992) and really should go ahead and test for Extra one of these days. I wanted to do it before the code restrictions were lowered from 20 wpm to 5, but I barely scraped by getting the 13 wpm for General!
When I first got my license I worked with a local club (LARC, Lynchburg, VA) and did a lot of event and public-service work with them. I loved it. I remember one long-distance charity bike tour circa 1994, we got there at zero-dark-thirty in the morning only to be told by the organizer that “oh, we have cellphones, we don’t need you.” (Remember, this was 1994...the cellphones were the big brick type.) We hung around anyway. Two hours later when the cellphone batteries began to die, we were in position and smoothly took over and saved the day.
I haven’t been active in years, sadly, my only rig right now is a tiny little Yaesu FT-817 with a portable antenna that can barely push a signal across the street, much less across the country. Money’s too tight to get back into it. Some days I kick myself for donating my old FT-101E to a club in South Carolina rather than move the boat anchor when I moved a few years ago.
}:-)4
As for the FT817 I think they are a nice rig for what they are but the "only" 5W is a serious limitation that makes it not too useful for tactical purposes or even everyday (unless a dedicated QRPer). Still as a foundation for experimentation with antennas, deployment scenarios and so forth it would be an excellent rig and I'd love to have one for just those purposes. So if you want to get rid of it let me know (freepmail or whatever) and if it's something I can pencil out - cause I'm in tough times too having had no income the last seven months not to mention 40% of my net worth vaporizing overnight - you'd likely come out with enough scratch for something more suitable for everyday use.
So please let me know if you have any thoughts of selling it.
My thoughts on the code elimination is it's about freakin' time. I hope that doesn't offend anybody.
It was always the bugaboo to me (probably mostly on principle) because even back in ‘78 I thought of it as antiquated & didn't have a lot of interest in learning it just for sake of tradition.
It was easy enough for me to learn it enough to pass my Novice, and I did actually operate on the air some. Even picked up an electronic keyer and it was sort of fun (though the fun part of it for me was learning all of it's features, adjusting speeds, weights, programming memories, playing back sequences of stored strings and so forth) but still the other end, copying it in my head and writing it down, was never enjoyable to me.
In ‘82 I think I bombed pretty bad on the 13 WPM code test but the cute girl who ran the test session complimented me on acing the written (while refusing to go out with me to celebrate). I was ready for that outcome, certain I would pass the written and probably not the code, so I came home happy. And the Technician Class was key to my interests at the time, FM and repeaters.
Over the years I was very involved in our local club's activity developing our group's own site on the mountain from the bare rocks facing many challenges throughout the project. We built the cinder block building, the steel burglar proof door, fortified roof, varmint proofing, and in perfect antenna weather (a near blizzard) erected our 100’ Rohn 45G tower. This site had no commercial power and the cost to get it there was prohibitive, so we installed a propane tank and thermal generator and the site operated full time on “emergency power”. And that's how it was for several years until the power company itself wanted to install a microwave relay there, then getting power to the site changed from prohibitive to almost nothing virtually overnight.
With more power available we could fully utilize the building and tower space and we started drawing paying tenants, the first ones being the local fire and EMS outfits, then & still two separate entities. The cops put some off network tactical/backup stuff in, a couple local paging companies started out there and so forth, and we expanded our own presence with a 220 box, a multiport packet node, and eventually a 440 repeater. So we had a successful mini business on our hands that helped (though not completely) fund the group's many activities down the hill.
I also was involved in packet, building some stuff on my own and testing some prototype stuff on my VIC-20 computer and it's many successors. Packet and other digital modes, ruined some computers, fried some rigs, let the smoke out of I don't know how many various gizmos, ran one of the state's major packet BBSs, and was involved in some statewide and regional coordinating bodies. Throughout all that time I had little to no interest in HF (nor the time for it) and came to hardly ever pick up a mike on VHF/UHF.
And in early 2000 a project had me so frustrated, the time some things were taking with little to no progress and one day I just pulled the plugs and boxed up the whole shack and that was that. But I owned my own time again and that was a pleasure, so I hardly ever looked back.
My renewed interest is in emergency power, portable/mobile HF operation, and I intend to experiment with some rapid deployable antenna designs, power schemes and so forth. There will through necessity be some VHF/UHF operation but I haven't that gear out of the mothballs yet. Perhaps someday necessity will even bring me to CW. In fact I do sometimes find myself stopping in the CW subbands while spinning through just long enough to see who that is blasting through on a dead band, so there is hope.