Hi Jim,
I see you are a shellback, I was supposed to cross in my one and only Wes-pac but things changed and we didn't cross. So I am still a wog.
I enlisted in the Navy in 1/1975, after a hitch in the Army. I was an Interior Communications Electrician. IC-man. They taught us tubes and told us they weren't being used in the fleet anymore. The Ship I was on, the U.S.S. Meyerkord, a 12 year old knox class distroyer escort when I reported aboard, had tube type amplifiers in every engineering space. So much for no tubes.
I am a Technician class I have an IC-746 PRO and love it. I am currently working to upgrade this year.
Currently I only do 2 meter in the Motorhome.