Cool Bri!!! First time I've met other hams here on the forum. Yes we both have our extra class licences, but haven't touched the equipment for a long while. I spent over a year working with my EC8 novice licence when we were restricted to using morse code only....no voice and on very small portions of the radio bands.....40 and 80 meters, and a small corner of 15 meters. I used to use an inverted vee antenna strung across our back garden and go though the night transmitting with an old straight key to Russians and Yugoslavians until the sun was coming up, using my Sommerkamp FT One rig, often QRP with very low power. The filtering on that equipment was awesome . It was such a challenge though as those Russians and Yugoslavs were working in very fast morse. The Italian hams also were fast and powerful. We also had a big three element beam with rotor that was great for contacting west coast North America and rest of the world but it blew down in one of our windstorms. And now we just have a small vertical antenna. I graduated to an electronic keyer for morse and had a wonderful time as many people were calling and wanting QSL cards from our EA8 area, which is classed as an African contact. After further exams and more morse tests I obtained my extra license and could them work all over the spectrum, including 20 meters which was always so busy it was intimidating. All exams were of course in Spanish so it was challenging to be studying electronics in that language. Do take morse if you can....it really is great to be able to communicate worldwide and is so exciting to think how far you can go with less power than a small lightbulb. Our station is quiet at the moment and we have to clean up the equipment and do some checking over of cables and contacts as there was so much humidity that there is some corrosion. Our German friend who comes regularly to stay with us keeps his equipment in another room here and works a lot in our station using his German DF3UT callsign in Pactor mode. Wolf is EA8AJS and I am EA8BUO. Small world eh? Sorry to highjack your birthday thread! Congrats to your husband and good luck when you do your upgrade. (And do the CW exam anyway, even if it's not mandatory. You can have great fun on the bands with it!) SharonCb

Thanks for the birthday wishes! This is the 5-0 birthday for me and it's just hard for me to believe it! After yesterday though, I'm FEELING it! LOL The house my boys lived in when they were in college is going on the market today so I was over there painting the kitchen cabinets and staging the bathrooms (cleaned them spic-n-span first). Oh my, I have soreness in places I didn't even know I had places! It probably didn't help that I came home and practically guzzled a bottle of wine while in the hot tub! So I guess 49 went out with a bang and 50 is coming in with a whimper. :-)

A happy happy birthday to you Mama!! I've got a BobLoad in the dishwasher and will run it in your honor.

Wait...Little G, Jase, MamaP and me are all April or (Aries) babies? Anyone else? Mine was April 4. When is yours Little G and Jase. Sorry didn't mean to hijack Alex's Birthday wishes thread.