Happy belated B-day Cindee and Anna! Sorry you had a sucky Big Day Cindee, You've been through alot this year. Give yourself abit of slack- probably not the easiest year to be searching for a new job anyway. I realize it's easier said than done, but is there anyway you could use your obvious plant growing and tomatoe growing skills to aquire employment? We on the forum are rooting for you! Sally

Since it just got bumped anyway, THANKS!!! to the latecomers. p.s. Kathleen - you've been missed. Come back soon or I'll blow all my snow eastward down 27.

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

Happy Birthday Mrsmarv! Thanks everyone!! I actually visited here last night for the first time in a long time. I was reading stuff that Stacey wrote about her kids and grandkids and the situation with them. It saddens me as a mom and grandmother. Thinking about you, Stacey!