Rick N8TGQ's advice

 Heeded!

Rick mentioned in the comments section in one of my latest posts that he never goes portable without his trusty EFHW. I am going to take to heart his sage advice, and from now on will always pack my K6ARK EFRW for 40 through 10 Meters.  It's small, light and with one of my 25 foot sections of RG-8X, is not all that much more to carry.

I used something similar (PAR ENDFEDZ 40/20/10) last year at the Lake with my Shakespeare 20 foot Crappie Pole bungeed to a fence post, serving as a mast. It worked well; and I just should have gone with "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But sometimes I'm like a moth attracted to a flame, getting entranced with "lighter and smaller".

In fact, the K6ARK EFRW is what I am planning on using for Flight of the Bumblebees which is coming up a week from this coming Sunday. The only thing I haven't decided is exactly which park I am going to operate from. If I elect to go to Cotton Street Park in town, it's a real short trip home should the weather get nasty all of a sudden. If I go to Washington Rock State Park, FOBB could double as a POTA activation.

The weather here at the W2LJ QTH has been like the Summers I remember from when I was a kid. Nastily hazy, hot and humid with pop up thunderstorms just about every afternoon. If that weather pattern continuers for the next couple of weeks, I may just decide to stick closest to home.

Speaking of other sage advice, I recently read Jeff KE9V's blog post about his "Purge". He's culling down the amount of organizations that he has to pay membership dues to now that he's retired. With my own retirement looming next year, I should probably think about doing the same. I'm already a Life Member of the ARRL and CW Ops. 

The only orgs I continue to pay dues to are QRP ARCI and the QCWA. I'll probably bite the bullet and continue to pay those, though.  Technically, there are no dues for QRP ARCI. Once you join, you are already a life member. The $25 yearly fee is for "QRP Quarterly" which I will continue to subscribe to - for now. QRP ARCI # 4488 is mine whether I subscribe to the magazine, or not.

Will I continue to keep my subscription going for SPRAT?  That may require the flip of a coin.

Life Membership in the QCWA is $500. I should have considered that when I became eligible to join in 2004. There is no way I'm coughing that up now. Dues are also $25 a year and to make Life Membership make sense at this point, I'd have to live for another 20 more years. Will I make it to 88? God willing, I will, but that's not a gamble I'm going to wager on at this point. Not pleasant to think about - but it is what it is,

In addition, I don't plan on making any MAJOR new equipment purchases any time soon. I am quite content with  my KX3 and KXPA100 in the shack, and my KX3 or QMX for portable operations. I don't need a radio with a waterfall or spectrum display. I'm good with what I have; and I don't need or desire the latest and greatest radio with bells and whistles that I probably wouldn't use anyway.  Truth be told is that if all I had at my disposal was an old Heathkit HW-101, I'd probably be happy with that! i guess I'm not a major supporter to the Amateur Radio community economy.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!