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I think I can understand part of the reason why - it's kind of a gatekeeping device. You're guaranteed to meet someone who at least has one interest similar to yours, and someone who's gone through the trouble of getting a license and a radio. It's not like going to ChatRoulette and clicking around until you get tired of seeing genitals.

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For (practically) any given interest, there's a way to find someone else with the same interest somewhere else that you can ask to Skype with.

Sure, but that's not as fun as the, uh, "organic" connection you can make over radio.

He's wrong. You don't need to use the internet to talk to someone from Australia. Using HF radio you can talk all over the world just using the Earth's ionosphere.

Or V/U/SHF - there's this big, passive repeater in the sky known as the Moon.

(Earth-Moon-Earth communication, or moonbounce, is basically to aim your antennas at the Moon and blast as much RF as you can muster at it, in the hopes that someone will pick up your echoes as the arrive back at Earth 2.5 seconds later.)

Anyone having the Moon over their horizon at the same time as Australia does should have a fair shot at working an Aussie at 144MHz and above.

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