Greetings all, and hope all is well with everyone. I'm back after my
fairly lengthy hiatus; I have moved out of the apartment I lived in for
12 years and moved down the road 3 miles East. I bought a 3-bedroom
duplex house in a very heavily CCR'd community -- but hopefully I'll
manage to get back on-the-air in some minimal way pretty soon. I need
a new HF rig for one thing -- my ancient IC-735 is pretty much toast
after over 18 years of constant service.

Ham radio on the local scene is pretty much toast as well -- club
membership is a third of what it was even 3 years ago, and between
making the move, doing my job, and dealing with some health issues, my
own participation has been virtually non-existant for more than a year.
I'm hoping that the coming of cooler weather I'll be able to do more
stuff radio-wise, perhaps get a dipole in my attic or rig a wire
vertical up the side of the house and load it with my auto-tuner.

As far as code v. no-code goes, I don't really care any more. I'm all
but done with that topic. The handwriting is on the wall, and no
matter what the FCC and the ARRL do to dumb-down the licensing
requirements, we will not see any big increases in the number of hams.
Even I now own a cell phone; so there it is. I can chat for hours free
of charge anywhere in the world after 9 PM EST and on weekends. BTW,
if anyone wants to do just that, e-mail me and we'll exchange phone
numbers. If you're on Verizon, we can chat for free 24/7!

Well, that's all for now. I'll be around.

73 de Larry, K3LT