Just for kicks, go onto a ham forum and ask about replacing the antenna on your blister pack FRS radio and watch all the wanna be ersatz FCC agents threaten you with 10 years in jail and a $20,000 fine
And boy to they really get hot and bothered over Baofengs...mention you are using a Baofengs and they are ready to send you to gitmo because it's not an FCC approved radio.
But ham is disappearing for 3 main reasons:
1) it's no longer relevant technology...I can hop on Skype or pull out a cellphone and talk with some dude from Japan for free with 100% reliability.....I don't have to skip a signal off the atmosphere and hope he doesn't have a cloudy day.
2) the people are fucking weird...they are either super elitist or ungodly antisocial( which makes their choice of hobby a little strange)
3) the licensing requirements haven't updated to the 21st century...there is no reason the licensing test can't be taken online (at least for the tech course)...but then again i dont need a license to buy equipment, so what good is that license actually doing?
"What good is that license actually doing?" you asked.
Well, it kept you off the airwaves, didn't it? And that may be a good thing as you will hopefully glean from the comments below.
I am going to raise the first BS flag on your statement that
1) it's no longer relevant technology...I can hop on Skype or pull out a cellphone and talk with some dude from Japan for free with 100% reliability.
Ham radio vs calling a friend in Japan via cell or Voice Over IP (VOIP) are two completely different things, serving different purposes. The latter are private, one-on-one connection whereas ham radio is a globally distributed citizens' broadcast system.
What you lack in privacy with ham you gain in the situational awareness department. You can just listen (without needing a license) to what people talk about all over the world. With the current level of global propaganda and censorship on all other media, I would say that listening to hundreds of personal observations and opinions on the air is as close as you can get to the real bottom line. That became abundantly clear during the Plandemic.
Ham radio also uses the oldest, most basic ways to transmit information wirelessly and therefore will be the last resort when things go dark. Anything fancier and reliant on proprietary, fixed infrastructure will be gone much sooner. This was clearly the case on the East Coast on the day of 9/11 when the cellular system was overloaded and then a few days later when the backup generators for the IP backbones ran out of diesel.
I am raising a second BS flag on
.I don't have to skip a signal off the atmosphere and hope he doesn't have a cloudy day.
Weather events in the atmosphere are, with the exception of interference from lightning, completely irrelevant for long distance propagation of radio waves. Yes, waves in the Giga Hertz range (think Microwave) are affected by moisture but those are line-of-sight propagation anyways.
The waves used for long distance transmissions are reflected by ionized (electrically charged) layers way up in the -you guessed it- Ionosphere. These effects are driven by solar cycles, emissions from solar flares, by the greyline that separates day and night, etc. In the HF world (low Mega Hertz) you talk about "Space Weather". To learn about these 'out of this world' mechanisms and then play around with them may be reason enough for some to get involved in this hobby. If spin drift has become too predictable and boring, you maybe want to learn about global
propagation patterns.
Finally, let's take a look at
2) the people are fucking weird...they are either super elitist or ungodly antisocial( which makes their choice of hobby a little strange)
That may be a case of "The way you shout in the Forrest is the way it echoes back"
As anecdotal evidence I would like to mention that in pursuit of my ham license I had the honor to have my understanding of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA, the key to transmitting thousands of private cell phone connection via just a few frequencies) brushed up by the guy who got the first patent on it. He was also a pilot with his own airstrip next to a huge cross that overshadowed an equally huge indoor arena, used for horse training during the week and for a down-to-sawdust mass on Sundays. There was no way you could tell from his demeanor that he was the retired, multi-billion co-founder of Qualcom. He was a rock-solid, fun brainiac, free of any pretense or Holier Than Thou attitude. (RIP, Klein.)
And who is to say whether bouncing a signal off a satellite or the moon is weirder than lobbing a bullet across a valley to hit a target that is barely visible to the naked eye. One geek may slap a Magnetospeed on his barrel and obsess about ES and SD, the other may use NIST calibrated frequencies, emitted in Fort Collins and received by a home-built, GPS time stabilized receiver to detect the movement of the ionizing layers via the Doppler effect. Fortunately for both, this country is still free enough to pursue both obsessions. And both groups do not seem to suffer know-it-all ignoramuses lightly.
You maybe surprised what doors open when you approach a new field with humility, clearly stating that you are a noob, looking for mentors instead of insulting those who perfected their craft over decades by pretending that you have all the answers before you even understand the questions.
