Larry You took the words right out of my mouth and many others who are ham
radio operators.People don't want to see changes,but it has to happen.
I for one don't like to pay hundreds of dollars to buy antennas that look
like crap on your house or property.Some monstrosities that look like ****
in plain english,that break or are blown down in some storms.Now you got to
kick out more money so you can talk to someone.I think antennas are over
priced for what they are.
Now talk about buying some radios.hundreds or thousands of dollars so you
can or maybe can talk to someone (or yell so they can hear you)just to outdo
the Jones.
Whit a half decent computer and sound card and mike,I can talk anywhere most
hams do and yet farther with no antenna farm ,amp, or radio if I want to.And
also consistantly on a daily basis.Computers are cheaper today than most
antennas.
I love ham radio also,My wife is a ham also.
Ecolink is here to stay.Try it,you may like it.
My two and a half cents worth.
"Larry" wrote in message
...
It's very interesting to see the emotion instead of solid logic. Ham radio
has several elements which draw people. One is the technical side of the
hobby and another is the talking side. Japan and their rice box radios has
brought to the surface the talking side. If you listen, you'll hear tons
of
QSO and people just talking their heads off. It really doesn't matter much
if it is on a rice box or on a computer for those people .. yet you hear
the
emotional responses about saving the bands etc .. YUK!

I live in a close neighborhood where 200 watts gets into telephones and
computer speakers and still some TV's and I gotta hang antennas everywhere
and make my house look like it's caught in a spider web. Now there BPL and
solar flare issues and the bands are terrible .. they suck. There's deed
restrictions, lawyers, PRB1, the ARRL the FCC. I can't talk 10 miles from
here on 75!

Then there Echolink. It won't do much for the technical side but unless
you
have used it a few times you couldn't possibly understand how nice it is
to
sit back, relax, and talk to your buddies without the jerks throwing
carriers and hog calls and pork butt songs, static crashes, dead bands,
contests, no antennas, no QRMers, no RFI ,, just hours of pleasant
chatting
with hams all over the world. I have met so many nice guys and had a lot
of
fun with the LINK and to those who want to fight it .. go ahead. When all
you can get from your radio is buzz pop click and your neighbor standing
on
your doorstep screaming for you to get off the radio .. feed your computer
sound card with a D104 and give Echolink a try.

I love ham radio but Echolink is a nice supplement.


"MD" wrote in message
.. .

"g3zhi" wrote in message
...
There are now over 132,000 callsigns registered in 139 different
countries.

There are daily additions, changes and deletions with over 1,000 new
calls
validated each week.

We might as well kiss our frequency allocations goodbye.
If we don't use them, were going to lose them.