I took a few years off from amateur radio, but returned to the hobby last summer. In the intervening time, I gained full HF privileges because Industry Canada changed the rules and anyone who had been a licensed amateur radio operator for at least three or four years at the time (I think) was grandfathered in.

As I mentioned in a blog entry last summer, some of the first stations I talked to on HF were lighthouses and lightships. Recently, I operated VC3R at the Ottawa Locks and talked to a station on an island off the coast of Maine near the Canadian border. Yesterday, I received the QSL cards from him for QSOs as both VC3R and VE3XGD. On the certificates were the numbers for a couple of lighthouses that he had activated for his event. This got me thinking back to last summer, so I did some googling and found the Amateur Radio Lighthouse Society’s website again. Reading through it, I decided to join the society. This morning, I received an email confirming that I am now ARLHS member #1489. 🙂

This is the first amateur radio-related organization I’ve joined that’s not a club, excluding RAC. I’m looking forward to activating a lighthouse event station sometime this summer.