I've been licensed for almost 9 years...but I honestly can't even tell you the last time I turned on one of my radios for actual HAM use. I have an Icom 706 in the Samurai that gets used on 11 meters on trail runs, and that's about it. Yeah yeah...illegal use, couldn't care less than the FCC does about illegal 11 meter operation, lol. I couldn't find a legit 11 meter radio with a factory remote head unit mount, I didn't want a rebanded (poorly) export 10 meter radio, there's no room up front to mount the typical Cobra behemoth, and I've never been all that happy with the performance of the mini radios.
I'm kind of disappointed in the whole experience, really. I'm sure a good chunk of it falls on me, though. I don't have any friends into the ham stuff, 99% of the time I'm the only one on 4x4 runs with ham capability, local VHF/UHF activity is comprised of the typical old folk's nets about what they ate for breakfast and how the weather varies two degrees from one city to the next (not that there's anything wrong with that, it just doesn't interest me), and from what I've heard on HF, it's either people trying to cram as many contacts as possible into a short period of time, the same old folk's nets just on a wider geographic scale, or the CB'ers with more money on 40/80 meters on those two frequencies (though I suppose better that they stick to those two frequencies than to spatter all over those bands plus surrounding ones with their "peaked and tuned" radios). Meanwhile, I get chastised by the group as a whole for not being a "real" ham whose ruining the hobby because I got my license post code requirement and because I'm not operating on HF collecting contacts.
I tried joining a local club last year, which only resulted in guilt trips because I'm not pilfering my company's radio stock for the club's benefit, once they learned that I run the radio shop here.