> 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.    
      
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