It's been raining all frigging weekend so I couldn't do anything outside. I'd ordered a new tuner (MFJ-939Y) for my FT-991 which got here on Friday and since I had nothig better to do, I installed it. Band conditions today were completely miserable up until about 730p tonight. And, when I sy miserable, the band condition web site was saying 1-4 (out of 100) across most of the bands. I tried to find something on the air but Kahn saying something about static was all I got. About 730, I started hearing stuff.
So, I went channel surfing on 40m and found a net asking for checkins on 7.185. Dialed close and hit the tune button. Got a green light so dialed in 7.185 and threw out my call sign. Surprisingly, they were able to hear me even thoug this multi-band vertical is somewhat mediocre. The NATA net folks welcomed me in and gave me a chance to make two contacts (that's their thing). Since I'd been listening for a while, there were a couple of stations that were booming, one in NH and the other in Georgia. So, I called each of those two and exchanged signal reports. A little while later, I made contact with the Michigan State Police 150yr. anniversary Special Event Station on 7.230.
From what I can gather, the MFJ can tune just about any antenna that's better than an unbent coat hangar (and I'm not 100% sure it wouldn't do that even).
I think I'm gonna like this hobby now that I can actually communicate over long distances, which is why I got into the hobby to begin with.