yeah ARRL do have their share of grumps. I suggest the site only as a place to start; a point of reference. They do have a fairly decent archive to help you catch up on.

What a shame to hear 2 meters is not active there. It was always a great band for finding out what was happening around the area.

I always felt code kept the hobby respectable. When all you could do was key the xmitter, you could still hold a conversation if you knew the code. Even jury rigging a spark gap xmitter was doable.

Digital xmissions were novel, but it always seemed that the digital stuff caused me the most trouble at work, and required continuous study trying to keep up with the myriad signal processing specs etc.

Yes, they do squeeze a bit too much into the unit functions now. Admittedly the old "Ron Popeil - Set it and forget it" units were better, even if quite limited comparably.

Well, at least we both like 214.

Cheers Martin.