> That's kinda sad. Not that there are new ones, and not that they fall
 > away (not every hobby is for every body, of course) but that they
 > boast that many new ones but most fall away. I'd rather have only
 > 5 people pass their test each year and 3 or 4stay than 15 pass it
 > and only 4 or 5 stay.

It's doesn't make sence to me either, why go though the trouble and pay for a
course then not do anything with it?  I did it solo, didn't cost me anything
and I hate the idea of just giving it up because the local stuff is so dead.

I can only think of a couple people that got licensed recently that around, one
 is a horrible operator, he'll key up and talk over people on nets if he wants
to talk and always runs high power so he just step on anybody that isn't.  He
inturpted me once while I was using the echolink on one repeater to connect to
the southcars net, and told the net controller (who had nothing to do with the
link being up) to get off the repeater because there was another net coming on
in a bit. 

 > HT I was only able to HEAR and SOMETIMES transmit. Now I have access
 > to repeaters 30 - 50 miles away as well. Maybe with a 'more than
 > HT' you'd have more people to talk to?

When I have a regular radio, I use to get good range, I'm on the 8th floor in
an apartment and use a home made groud plane on 2m. I use to get in to a
repeater about 50 miles away til they lost access to the tower they were using
and had to move the repeater.  There's a couple other out of town repeaters I
could hit, but they were small towns and pretty quiet too. 
 > GB3LV? If so - just connected... No response yet, but I'll add it to
 > my favorites!
took some looking, when I first got on the air i logged evey contact on paper
using a old Radio Shask logbook I modifity and reprinted, yes, GB3LV, April 24
2010, and the contact was m0rom. 
--- RA2+ FMail