My dad still has his license, but doesn’t use it very often anymore. He had a 40 foot tower until a hurricane got it a few years ago. He can use voice, but he prefers morse code. Apparently there is some sort of competition/field day thing every year where the local radio club will set up at the high school football stadium. They always call him for that because of his code speed.
I got my 2 meter rig setup for under $600 Canadian, back when that meant “significantly less than American.” Bought the antenna locally, transciever came from somewhere in the U.S. Midwest, courtesy of Ebay. If I were better with electronics, I would try homebrewing a rig out of parts from abandoned scrapyard sets. But alas, I am simply not that cool. 
I’ve had a Technician’s license for about 20 years but haven’t been active since leaving the country.
I was mostly active on 440 and less so on 2m. Still have all my gear stashed away at my parents home. If/when I move back that’s one of the things I’ll have to go through…
Nobody chatted with Martin Brandeaux? I would have thought he was a highly sought QSL.
Ham Here.
For those who are even the slightest bit interested in ham radio, I really hope you at least take the tech exam. I bet you get half the answers right without even opening a book or studying. It is really that easy. 35 questions, multiple choice, 74% to pass.
And the question pool is public!
Go for it!
Take a practice exam: here, or here.
The hardest part of at least the entry level Technician license is wanting to take it.
Really!
I haven’t keyed a radio since earlier this spring (at Dayton, actually) but I think about it all the time. Here’s a bit about my interests:
In the last year, I’ve got into operating HF-SSB qrp or low power voice on the shortwave band. I use a Yaesu FT-817D that has a maximum output of 5 watts. I’ve achieved better than a thousand miles per watt, pretty amazing, I think. My antenna is a horizontal dipole about 30 feet total width strung up in my attic. It is perhaps 20 feet above ground. My antenna is horrible but I still talked to people thousands of miles away. I still can’t get over it.
I also enjoy military radios, especially HF packsets. For anyone interested, here’s my current set: Marconi/Selex CNR-2000
http://www.army-guide.com/eng/product3255.html
A shot in the dark, I’m sure, but does anyone have any antennas for this thing? The audio connectors are hard to get, too.
Other than the Yaesu qrp rig, I don’t own an amateur-market radio. All of my UHF and VHF rigs are commercial Motorola with a heavy emphasis on Astro (digital mode / P25) radios.
Similarly, I have a fleet of Motorola/Mobat Micom commercial HF radios. I have a couple autotuners for them and they work great. When I have the Micom set up, I’m usually running Automatic Link Establishment, a digital mode that is well suited for HF. Late model Micoms have ALE modems embedded in the firmware and totally operable via front panel. The idea here is to allow a fairly untrained operator to make and maintain reliable comms by calling on several channels and maintaining a list of likely channels based on sounding. Check HFLink for more information on the largest amateur net of this type.