Hacker News Reader

I'm on the board of the amateur radio club at my university. It's incredibly difficult to attract students to the club. I think it's less a problem of an age gap and more a problem of the opportunity cost from tinkering with transceivers and not, say, strongly typed programming languages.

View on HN

If my university had such a thing, I'd be the first person to sign up!

As it stands we don't, but a couple friends and I are working on a CTF team (the security competition kind) with weekly meetings. We have been meeting for almost two years now, but as we go on internships and even graduate, potential new members seem indeed more interested in drinking and Call of Duty...

You should start one. When I was a freshman my university had a faltering club and I sort of gave up on it but really wish I'd helped revitalize it.

The same could have been said about a lot of electronics not too long ago. I feel like the tide could swing back with the resurgence of hardware tinkering/Maker movement. It wouldn't take the form of cranky old vacuum tube radios though. More likely HackRF digital stuff controlling a wide area of IoT widgets or something.

I'm surprised we're not seeing more Amateur Radio style equipment used in drones but perhaps the FAA line of sight restrictions don't make range such a priority.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com