[unxdfa]

I had ham radio passed down to me. This turned out, ironically considering it’s a communications hobby, to be isolating and a rather nasty bubble. Sort of like an aether 4chan full of bigots, racists and status chasing money spenders. Explained my father entirely.

There are some niches in it which are still manageable (QRP, SOTA) but I don’t want to become associated with the rest of them.

YMMV but I would encourage people to find their own interests and try and look for more progressive ones without a perpetually ageing demographic.

I found photography, hiking, travelling to be a better social outcome.

[naavis]

There is a saying about radio amateurs here: 99% of radio amateurs ruin the reputation of the rest.

[themodelplumber]

Every hobby has this though. I felt fortunate to have discovered SWL, GMRS, Amateur Radio, etc. long after learning the same lesson with everything from Trail maintenance work to Disc Golf to Drones to Pickleball.

If association and its ah...trappings are important to you, it's far easier to manage down your inner critic by exploring a nuanced approach to association in context than it is to find a hobby that's more/less immune to such problems.

(This is doubly true if you are interested in the broader topic of interests and hobbies)

[unxdfa]

The ratio of cranks and weirdos to normal people is 9:1 with ham radio. It’s usually the other way round with other hobbies.

The thing that gets me with ham radio is some see it as a social responsibility even here in the UK where its totally unnecessary from an emergency comms perspective.

[themodelplumber]

> The ratio of cranks and weirdos to normal people is 9:1 with ham radio.

Not sure what "weirdos" is meant to mean in context but with regard to disagreeable people, this has not been my experience at all unless I go looking for it. YouTube comments, specific freqs in 80m band come to mind, but again, not where I typically go to look for anything interesting.

Local friends and meetups, classes, and even the academic side of the hobby are pretty amazing. Emergency drills at the local hospital are fun and I've connected with really nice people in and out of the hobby that way.

> totally unnecessary from an emergency comms perspective.

Completely different over here I guess. I've assisted people in wildfire emergencies and cell outages due to fiber optic cuts.

I've also had some close calls while hiking in e.g. sudden lightning storms in remote areas and had people on the radio asking how I was doing, if I needed assist, etc.

Seems what you shared is more about your local and family experience though? If so, don't let my take on the situation yum your yucks...

[unxdfa]

The academic side is less bananas I will give you that. And your comment about 80m is spot on. The problem we have here in the UK, is that it's pretty easy to get a 2m HT and a license to use it. Huge swathes of amateurs never progress past that or take a technical interest at all. I've lived in 3 separate areas where the local 2m nets are full of people with very defective personalities. The sort you'd find in a flat-roofed pub. And they're the guys who actually go to the clubs and the hamfests here.

It's pretty not exciting here as far as emergencies go. So our emcom network (Raynet) are limited to dressing up like police offers as far as they can legally do it and managing the car park at public events. The real emergency services here are very well equipped to handle this themselves with cross service commercial radios. And there's very few places you can't get a 4G signal now, even in the middle of bloody nowhere.

I did enjoy working CW QRP and chasing miles-per-watt to some degree. It was also difficult to be an asshole on CW so people didn't bother. SSB / FM is just urgh.

[yellowapple]

> YMMV but I would encourage people to find their own interests and try and look for more progressive ones without a perpetually ageing demographic.

I'm of the opposite mindset: responding to unpalatable elements of a given subculture by abandoning it entirely only reinforces those unpalatable elements. Better to persist - and in doing so, encourage others of your mindset to persist alongside you.

I don't blame people for choosing to abandon subcultures entirely rather than persist within them - persistence is exhausting, after all, and it's unreasonable to demand that people exhaust themselves for minimal reward - but I do think persistence produces the best outcome for everyone long-term.

[enkid]

Why do you think that ham radio is that way? Is it that a large number of the hobbyists are trying to be outside the system?

[unxdfa]

Having met a lot of people I think the license gives some kind officialdom and status which they are otherwise lacking and desire. This is an attribute demanded by a large number of people with defective personalities.

Granted a chunk of people go in for the technical interest (I did ultimately) but the other folk rub off on a lot of them and it normalises into the amorphous bubble of defective personalities.