Not all of the MARS traffic consisted of phone patches. I operated Navy MARS for 20 years. (beginning in 1976) I have a certificate of appreciation from a Rear Admiral thank me for 15 years of service.
At one point I belonged to a HAM club in AZ where the “Chief” of Army MARS also belonged. Great guy.
There were some really good operators, not all retired military, but all loved the military.
There are very very few “lefties” in the HAM community. I’ll bet if you had a way to access it, there are very very few “lefties” that are engineers either.
Roger that!! There's a fairly large group of us on the South West side of Chicago that chat on 146.445 (Simplex) and you won't find an Obama supporter in the bunch.
Our nightly chat typically consists of what the a**hole in chief has screwed up that day. Granted, I'm usually the instigator and the conversation starts with something I posted on my blog, NoBamaNation
As for my station:
Kenwood TS-940SAT (HF Rig) w/Heathkit SB-220 amp
Kenwood TS-711A (2 meter all-mode) w/KLM 200w amp
Kenwood TS-811A (440mhz all-mode) w/KLM 200w amp
My "Antenna Farm"
Rohn HDBX-48 Tower
Mosley 33 Classic (10/15/20M)
Stacked Cushcraft 13B2 (2m) horizontally mounted
Diamond 2m/440 omnidirectional vertical
Solarcon IMAX-2000 (10M Vertical) Alpha Delta DX-CC Wire (10 - 80, inc. 12, 17 and 30)
Other "Goodies"
I have a Com-Spec TE-32 mult-tone CTCSS Encoder on my Kenwood 940 for 10 Meter FM repeater communications. Last night I chatted with other Ham's in Los Angeles and New York on a LA based repeater. That was waaaaaay cool and finally 10M is opening up.
It's going to be a fun field day!
dah dit dah