In article , Dave Heil
writes:

N2EY wrote:

In article , Dave Heil

writes:

robert casey wrote:

N2EY wrote:

One doesn't attend the meetings of some of these clubs to see if that
club would be for him.

Why not? I did.

...because the only way to attend some of 'em is by invitation.

Wow! Never heard of that before!

Someone will let him know if the club is for him
and notify him only after it has been decided to invite him to join or
not.

At least in the club that the story describes, there's a world of
difference
between attending meetings and joining up. Going to meetings is one way to
find
out if the club is for you or not. Everyone was very nice to me when I went
there, even thought I was an almost complete stranger. They didn't know my
callsign or license class, either.

The Cincinnati area club, described below invited prospective members of
their choosing to attend a meeting. The invited attendee was "grilled"
a bit about his on-air activities, his DXCC status and his contesting
interest.

Understandable, to a point anyway. If the club is special-purpose, folks with a
different focus will almost certainly try to change the direction.

I was invited to a meeting and determined within the first
fifteen minutes or so that I wasn't interested. This old, old club is
all but extinct now--a result of being too picky about who joined. The
old core membership simply died off.

Understandable!

There's a certain Cincinnati area DX club which required DXCC and an
invitation to join. The Southwest Ohio DX Association, on the other
hand, doesn't restrict membership. Any guy with a 10m rig and a dipole
can sign up.

Yup. We have clubs like that around here, too.

There are few clubs hereabouts and none of them are DX/contest clubs.
It is a minimum 25 drive for me to attend even our country ARES
meetings. The nearest DX/contesting club is in Pittsburgh, an
hour-and-a-half away.
In the valley, those who chase DX are K8IP, N8NN, W8GBH and me.

I've belonged to a few clubs in my 37 years, but recently time limitations are
a big problem. It's not that I have no time, it's that the time comes in small
bits at unpredictable or inconvenient times. Most clubs don't have meetings on
weekdays at 5 AM, for example.

I'm not
nearly as active in contesting as in previous years. The idea of
spending 44-45 hours of a 48 hour CQ WW doesn't appeal to me as much now
as it did a decade or so back. I tend to do more single band entries.
160, 80 or 40m guarantees some sleep during the day. 10m at the current
point in the solar cycle would allow me to sleep all night and be bored
all day.

I've always been domestic-contesting focused, for some reason. SS, Field Day,
NA sprints, etc. Small potatoes to the serious contest folk in these parts, but
much more do-able for those with moderate stations and time.

Two weekends to SS, btw. QRP with the K2 or low power with the Type 7? We'll
see.

73 de Jim, N2EY