First, Jim Haynie is out of the hospital as of a couple of days ago. Jim told me he was tackling his email backlog and I've seen a few messages from him, but am not certain that everyone got the good news of his release. He's been told not to fly for a couple of weeks. Second, my left hand is out of its soccer-ball-sized cast and in a more modest bandage that allows me to write and to type with two hands again. There are about 50 stitches in the palm of my hand and in two fingers, but I already have much better finger motion than prior to the operation and can put my palm flat for the first time in a couple of years. The sutures come out next Thursday. Yesterday afternoon I spent about an hour meeting with Don Schellhardt of the National Antenna Consortium. Don lives in Connecticut but will be relinquishing his position with NAC and moving to San Francisco shortly to work on a Master's degree. He was interested to hear about the grassroots lobbying initiative that Frank Fallon's committee is working on and thought that some of the current NAC membership would be interested in participating. We talked a bit about the 109th Congress and the desirability of finding Senate sponsors for a companion bill to Rep. Israel's HR 1478 (which will have a new number if it's reintroduced in the new Congress); I told him we would welcome NAC's assistance in identifying sponsors. With his departure NAC's future is a bit uncertain, although Don said he was turning things over to Jerry Agliata, W2GLA. 73, Dave K1ZZ