Sorry I missed your birthday yesterday Brianne!
Best wishes for another good year ahead!

SharonCb

Hope your day was lots of fun!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Bri!

Did you ever make it to Mitchell's when you were in Detroit for dinner???

Nancy

Thanks all! My birthday was mostly spent driving back from the coast. We went over for an amateur radio event and to escape the 90+ degree heat at home. It was a lovely 65F on the beach. The weekend was too short, but it was nice to get away for a day or two at any rate!

Nancy~ Yes, we did go to Mitchell's. What a wonderful dinner that was! I couldn't believe how good all the plates going by me looked and I certainly wasn't disappointed when my salmon arrived. Everything was absolutely perfect. Thanks for the tip!

Just a quick question Brianne....if you were attending an amateur radio event.....are either you and your dh radio hams?

Both my DH and I are fully licenced radio amateurs with EA8 callsigns with our station in a garden radio shack here in Tenerife.

Just curious!....73s & 88s!

SharonCb

Happy Birthday Bri!

Sharon~ We are both hams. My dh has an extra class license, so he can operate pretty much wherever he wants in the bands. I've just got my technician license, I passed the general exam but wasn't ready to take the morse code test. Then they dropped the morse requirement 1 week after my written test results expired. Oh well, I will likely get my extra this summer. I can't let the husband "outrank" me!

Our shack is in our office, and has taken over a lot of the space. The dh just received his Elecraft K3 HF rig last week after 5 months of waiting. He's a little giddy right now and leaves the shack only when forced. :)

73s & 88s back a you!
Bri

Happy Birthday..sounds like a winner of a day!

Well, I'm late, as usual. Nonetheless, I wish you a very, very happy birthday and congratulations to your husband.

Now get back and take that other test, you can't be outranked by your DH!

Annie

I'm late to the party, too. Happy Birthday anyway, Bri! It sounds like you have a fun weekend.

Sally

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

Its funny that there aren't more hams on the forum, I meet them in the strangest places in the rest of my life, why wouldn't more of us be on these forums!? :) Oh, and no worries on hijacking the birthday thread.

I already am about halfway there with my morse. I listen to my dh chattering away in it every night and I've just started picking it up. I still get tripped up on some of the lesser used letters like v and x, but I'm getting there. I'll let you know when I get my extra and maybe we can chat sometime. Maybe later in the sunspot cycle when things won't be so awful for propagation...

Bri