Funny thing, out of the blue I decided to take practice tests for a ham license last night. Took the practice test about 12 times and got passing score 7 times. Opened HN today and this is one of the top articles... Interesting coincidence.
Spent about 15 minutes listening to a repeater.
"Jesus, these people are abrasive as best, all they are doing is saying their call over and over and complaining"
Stopped studying, couple weeks later was at a friend's house and near a different repeater, same stuff different people. Now I just keep the battery maintained and it tuned to a weather broadcast in the event I lose power during a storm.
I mean, in the event of a natural disaster it's pretty cool and you can help replay information and be of use to your community but ehhhh it's an awfully expensive hobby for that unless you want to just buy a cheap handheld and have no range whatsoever since you have an antenna the size of a drinking straw a few inches away from your body.
And then build this. https://hackaday.com/2019/06/05/mobile-sigint-hacking-on-a-c...
Companies have been putting radio transceivers in all sorts of devices, and almost all of them are insecure piles of rubbish. Yet because the tools to analyze them have been nearly non-existent, I designed and built the RadioInstigator.
We're just now seeing radio-fuzzing and other attacks. And I'd expect that this area is going to explode in the coming year. SigInt is now in the hands of the average joe and jane. Devices that relied on security as 'cant easily get the gear' are no longer secure. It's now just a matter of time.