Don't worry, I'm not ending my ham-radio career! I'm still plenty busy and enjoying radio, and I've actually had my rig turned on more in the last few days than I have in the last 2 months. The era that is coming to an end however, is my "mobile HF" career.
When I first got into ham radio, I was doing a TON of traveling in my car - often 6+ hours in a single day, and numerous multi-state trips. With all that road time, it made sense to invest the time and effort to install HF gear in the car. Anyone who has done a proper HF mobile install however, can tell you just how time consuming that can be, when you start getting into bonding, the heavy cabling needed for powering an HF rig, etc.
Well, as the last couple years have gone by, I have actually been spending less and less time traveling, and more time working from home, and doing meetings via skype, conference call etc. this is awesome for me and my family, but it also means that the gear just wasn't seeing much use in the car. It was nice to have it there when I did travel, so I just left well enough alone.
The time came however, for a new car, and I just got notice that my new one has been delivered to the dealership. I spent this past weekend pulling all the radio gear out of my old car, and considering that the vast majority of my driving now will be shorter trips, I just don't see the point in going through the effort to put all the gear in the new one. I'll probably throw in a 2m/70cm dual bander at some point, but I suspect I won't install much more than that in this new vehicle (unless I suddenly go road-warrior again.)
So with that, N3VEM/M is signing off, but you'll still hear me from the parks operating portable with my go-kit, and you'll probably hear me from the home shack a lot more often!
bye for now!
bye for now!
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