[germinator]

Eh. It might be a part of it, but the hobby just lost its luster. It used to be this magical way to connect with friends and strangers. Now, cell phones and the internet make it a lot less magical.

Other aspects of the hobby aged poorly too. The ham community (and the regulators) were slow to embrace use cases that might have been interesting to younger people in the 21th century - say, mesh networking. Instead, the kids were supposed to follow in the footsteps of the old-timers and get excited about slow-scan TV, RTTY, and collecting QSL postcards.

Frankly, I don't know of any other hobby with a comparable amount of gatekeeping. It sucks because the increasingly idle spectrum will eventually get auctioned off for commercial use.

[hallway_monitor]

I agree. Got into it during COVID - it was really fun learning about radios, RF, building antennas and stuff. But when it actually came to using it....there's not much to do unless you really get a kick out of making contact with random people who are far away and getting points for that to win contests. It is nice to know that I can communicate thousands of miles with no infrastructure but currently I don't have a need for that.

[jjav]

> Now, cell phones and the internet make it a lot less magical.

I know people feel that way but IMO ham radio is still magical because you can communicate across continents without any dependency on anything or anyone else.

Sure the internet is faster and more convenient, but for that IP packet to reach its destination it depends on a cast of thousands of components across dozens of providers to all be working correctly.

With ham radio, you just need the radio and a generator and the laws of physics to communicate across the globe. That's pretty magical!

[markemer]

Maybe it’s just because I’m an EE, but I really got into the data modes too. Like did you know how stupid simple old school pagers are to create signals for? You have to make some slight modifications get them into the Ham Bands (or buy a new one, apparently a thing!) but after that it’s just 512 baud FSK.

[MobiusHorizons]

Fascinating! Is there overlap of some equipment with a ham band or do you have to modify the frequency of the equipment? What band do you use? Now I want to try this.

[topspin]

> Is there overlap of some equipment with a ham band or do you have to modify the frequency of the equipment?

There are many cases of overlap. The "upper" pager band is 929-931 MHz. There is a lot of adaptable commercial 900 MHz equipment knocking around. There are also agile transceivers ICs like STM32WL than can tune 150-960 MHz continuous, for example. The lower pager bands are at the lower end of VHF. You can make transceivers at those frequencies from through-hole parts and cheap tools.

The great thing that has emerged recently is low cost RF tools. You can get cheap, hobbyist grade RF instruments for a song today. NanoVNC, TinySA, affordable antenna analyzers and more can do things that cost thousands of dollars only 10 years ago.

[cbfrench]

Last night I got a place to stay in Switzerland through a PSK-31 QSO. Didn’t even ask. Mentioned that we would like to visit the country in the next couple of years, and it just so happened the ham I was contacting lives on top of an Alp next to a monastery. When he found out Switzerland was on our list, he enthusiastically offered to make whatever arrangements necessary for us to stay at the monastery to visit. I’m definitely sending him a QSL card.

Sure, that interaction could have happened on the internet, but it is highly unlikely to have done so, given how I (and most people) use the internet. And no one is calling random foreign strangers on their phone.

Perhaps radio is no longer “magical,” but it is still serendipitous. When I sit down, I have no idea who or where will be receiving my RF. I have talked to a wider variety of people all over the world with my radio than I ever have with my laptop—at least in terms of real conversation and not just interacting on a reddit post or what have you. And, sure, plenty of QSOs are also just about your rig, your antenna, the weather, etc., but even being marginally curious about others’ lives usually garners some interesting conversation.

These are people with whom I would never have had the chance to converse without the happenstance of the ionosphere. So, I dunno, seems pretty magical to me. Maybe the broader issue is that folks generally aren’t interested in having random encounters and conversations with others.

As far as the gatekeeping aspect, that’s definitely a problem. The number of sad hams out there still bitching about how “FT8 isn’t real radio” is too damn high. But it’s a big hobby, and there are more licensed hams in the US now than there ever have been in terms of raw numbers, and it’s pretty close to an all-time high as a proportion of the population, too. So I think there’s room for optimism about it.

[itomato]

You can scoff at the price of second hand analog gear at a HAMfest or you can embrace SDR and OSHW.

As the hobby evolves, so does the hobbyist.

The FCC's door is as open as always.

[firesteelrain]

It’s all what you make of it. I have built antennas to talk to Amateur Radio satellites, launched PicoBalloons (one went over Iran just as the attack was kicking off a couple weeks ago), NOAA APT and GOES LRIT capture, SDRs, Parks on the Air (which honestly has reinvigorated ham radio ALOT), WSPR, FT8/4, Shortwave Radiogram, etc

Then there is Ham Radio Crash Course, Long Island CW Club (Morse code has made a big comeback), and contesting which when that happens the bands are slammed

I have even sent memes over SSTV or captured imagery from the International Space Station. I have made QSOs with an Astronaut from my backyard with an HT.

Anyways there are lots of things to do. I am in a HOA and my end fed is installed in my attic. No one knows

There’s also flagpole antennas. Oh and I forgot about DMR and DSTAR or PiSpots. Raspberry Pi is big in ham radio

[hnthrowaway0328]

Pico ballons seem to be extremely interesting. Is it legal to release such?

[hnthrowaway0328]

I'm wondering how feasible it is for individuals to crack encrypted communication, and hack radios, preferably secured ones but I don't know where to buy one. Those encrypted radios in the 70s and 80s must be obsolete, right?

I'm not into communicating with other people. Hacking computers and radios seem to be a lot more interesting.

[mikewarot]

>spectrum will eventually get auctioned off for commercial use

Which is a tax on anyone who ends up using it. Selling the airwaves was a huge mistake.

[Dalewyn]

>Frankly, I don't know of any other hobby with a comparable amount of gatekeeping.

Personal computing, and particularly FOSS.

>the hobby just lost its luster. It used to be this magical way to connect with friends and strangers. Now, cell phones and the internet make it a lot less magical.

I surmise personal computing tomorrow will be the ham radio of today. We're already seeing the disillusionment among the masses and particularly the young.