Subj : Re: Wannbe HAM
To   : JIMMY ANDERSON
From : Kent Timm
Date : Mon Sep 19 2016 07:57 pm

 > There have been a few other newish HAM's pop up on one of the
 > repeaters, so I guess I'm hitting it at a good time.

I don't know what happens to the new hams around here.  I've been licensed 
since the beginning of 2010 and every fall they have a ham course at the local 
club (which I am not involved with btw) and they usually claim about 16 to 18 
new hams each course, but rarely do I hear any body new on the repeaters over 
the years.  and the ones that do turn up don't stay active long.
Part of me wants to get a regualr VHF radio again instead of just the HT, 
since I have to keep the HT in the right spot to get a good signal, but I just 
is hard to justity even getting a used radio when there's nothing on there to 
hear or talk to except a couple nets..  btw: I got my license solo.  I used an 
old Radio Shack book "from 5 watts to 1000 watts" and some study info I found 
on a Toronto club's website.


 > I was in my wife's truck yesterday and I don't have her mobile rig
 > installed yet, so I popped open EchoLink on my iPhone just to see...
 > Went to a repeater in Alabama I had made a contact on and 'chewed'
 > for about 30 minutes with two different people local to that area.

I don't use echolink that much, but did something like that myself, randomly 
picked a repeater in London UK and put out my callsign and talked to a guy 
there on his way home from work for a while.  There's an echolink net out of 
Florida (southcars) I check in to from time to time too. 
--- RA2+ FMail
 * Origin: HoloDeck BBS -  London Canada  (1:229/728)

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