Yesterday at our club's local hamfest, I took and passed the exam for Extra class, and my wife took and passed her General class exam too. So now once we get our HF antenna setup, we can both operate worldwide on the HF bands.

Also, I don't think I mentioned we switched to vanity calls recently. When we were first licensed, we got the sequentially assigned calls KC9SPL and KC9SPK. We liked the SPL and SPK suffixes but wanted slightly shorter calls. We also like the idea of keeping the regional indicator "9" since we like where we live. And we're both a little oldschool, and (generally) K is thought of as "west of the Rockies" and W is "east of the Rockies" - and luckily W9SPL and SPK were available, so they are now ours!

Also picked up an in-need-of-service IC-901A mobile radio for $20 (yes, $20) at the Hamfest, as well as a ton of adapters and an antenna for our new-to-us F-150. Was a good hamfest!

It was good seeing N9YRX (John) and his grandson, N9GSU & KC9SPT (Rick and Holly), and N9IZ and his (newly licensed as of yesterday!) wife at the 'fest!