Finally Giving Radio A Shot

[Raptured]

I find transmitting somewhat less exciting than listening, personally. But with stuff like ham radio one of the draws is getting QSL cards and making contacts over extremely long distances. From a technical standpoint, there's mostly nothing this does that can't be accomplished by phone and internet in the year 2024, but that wasn't the case in the 90s and earlier. Probably why the hobby is somewhat dying out and I think this is a shame because we can easily have another Carrington Event at any time and long distance wireless comms will immediately become useful again.

QSL cards may sound lame, but you do have to remember that these transmitting rigs hams use are all for the most part "home built" and sometimes even the transmitting equipment itself has been built by the operator. So, there is a sense of personal satisfaction and accomplishment one gets from knowing that what you built actually works or even works well. Kinda like the famous scene in Back to the Future where 1955 Doc Brown sees his working Flux Capacitor from 1985 and drops to his knees screamng "it works!"

Good stuff.  I can totally understand now.  I'm not good with electronics much but I find it very interesting.  I miss a lot of the hobby and craft stuff we did as kids.  I loved putting model cars, planes and ships together (only to blow them up later with firecrackers).   Model rockets were a blast too but I can count on one hand the number of times a shot actually worked as advertised (chute opened and it didn't fall a mile away).

Thanks for the reply