Not only am I pursuing this because I want long-range emergency comms in case cell networks go down (like what happened with Verizon recently), but also because I see a very notable contraction on what communication is allowed to be done on the internet, especially in the last year. Censorial regimes around the world seem to be accelerating and I don't want to be cut off from communications because I am not of an "accepted" identity.

And yes, I'm aware that states police the amateur airwaves too. But I see it more like how getting a driver's license doesn't mean I can't flee a country with my car... Learning to drive, or operate a radio, is still a valuable skill to learn and practice.

I don't know if there are others like me.

EDIT: Glad to see that there are others around. Happy to meet you. Async acks are great. So is the joy of engaging with something intellectually challenging.

I did it online thru the New York Radio Club (?).

I did Novice then General in about 30 minutes. I studied for maybe 6 hours immediately prior.

I grew up from age 5 in my Dads ham shack in NZ - every single thing he had made, transmitters, receivers, antennas, the feed wire, oscilloscope, signal gens, grid dip oscillator etc with many parts salvaged. In NZ in those days that is how most people did it, at least partially.

I also have an Electrical Engineering degree.

So sort of had a bit of background working knowledge, which meant I wasn't starting from scratch.

KK7RBX

Experience of Canadian ham scene though is it's almost all just buying/selling equipment, to the point some channels were occupied by automated announcements of what people were buying and selling. APRS is fairly well used though, and by far the best way to find what is in the local area.

For better or worse the more dynamic and technically interesting stuff now seems to be with SDR and Meshtastic/Meshcore. Even the people with envy inspiring antenna arrays are mainly on the mesh stuff.

For people who don't use radio for communication (chat), what do you do? I guess it's useful as an emergency measure, but I could simply purchase an ordianry radio or use my car's, not a ham radio.

I had two atypical goals with it:

- If I could present a certificate that says "the Government admits that I know something about how RF operates" maybe my irritating brother would acknowledge me when I tried to explain that Wi-Fi multipath concerns no longer apply when we plugged his machine into a hard-wired Ethernet socket.

- Being able to brandish "the FCC allows me to build a 200-metre antenna tower in the backyard" as a counterargument when the local HOA hassles me about the weeds that apparently have evolved beyond vulnerability to the stuff they sell at the local home centre.

It feels very "bifurcated" as a hobby -- you either do 2m/70cm stuff with little $100 handhelds, or you start doing outright construction projects to deal with antenna sizes, and spending four figures to explore HF.

I have mostly worked HF phone, but in latter years I've (finally!) become reasonably proficient in CW, too.

I enjoy the technical aspects of the hobby, being a radio frequency engineer - but also enjoy chatting to others, particularly to improve my language skills - Portuguese and Brazilian hams are an absolute delight and quite patient as I try to make myself understood in Portuguese!

Oh, and chasing the occasional award - but I am not very good at sending in the paperwork, so I guess I had better do that soon and get some paperwork for my shack. I have a particular soft spot for the RSGB IOTA program, as I live on one - EU-079 - myself.

I hope to be QRV from home again before long, though - I live on a farm, have lots of room, and I have a small mast and an almost finished wire beam in the barn, so with any luck I'll be able to put it all together and have a working station again sometime this spring!

We now have 3 classes, I hold the "highest" class, A, but I'd still suck on the air, mostly because I'm almost never on the air.

https://www.k0tfu.org/repeater-systems/intermountain-interti...

Sold Yaesu portable unit at the height of COVID after some fun with it. Still mess with the HTs sometimes but looking for an opportunity (time wise) to get back into it.

I'm part of a code club at the local school, and would love to show them radio too, spark that curiosity and imagination. I think it'll be out of scope for this year though.

Getting my general and maybe extra are goals for the year. Want to get on HF before the sun cycle starts winding down

73!

I got into it recently mainly to play with digital modes on HF for emergency comms and also because it’s an interesting and unexplored field for me.

5 and 5, 73.

—73

It's taken nearly 30 years, from buying the study guide in high school to finally sitting the test in my 40s. But glad I finally got it done.

Poll would be better for that :p

The LMR license is more useful to me than my amateur license - I can just hand my friends my pile of cache radios and get yapping at an event. As a plus, we can run encryption and other fun things on the LMR license (within the bounds of our emissions) like APCO P25 (Project25) data transmissions.