I Took a Break from Ham Radio and Why I Came Back | Hacker News Reader

I Took a Break from Ham Radio and Why I Came Back

kj7nzl.net

17 pointsparsecs9 comments

I find the tech elistist attitudes very off putting to new users. Recently there was a discussion about mhz vs MHz after a new user posted short question about a transmission heard in 6mhz band. One user answered his question while the rest argued over the use of millihertz vs megahertz when clearly the context was megahertz. A quick search of the forum showed less than 6 posts in 10 years of users inquiring about millihertz. Clearly the OP quickly typed mhz instead of MHz and then was chastised for it. Not a very good way to welcome people to the field.

Got into it in teens. Aside from friends, everyone was old as dirt.

Got into it 20 years later. Original old people all gone. Everyone still ancient as dirt.

Guess I’ll try again if I ever get old. Maybe It’ll be fun then.

I would like to really get into it, but I get hung up with the monotony of weekly check ins and no one really else around except for the same 5 people on the repeaters.

I'm in the same boat. Really, I got my ticket about a year ago and still haven't transmitted.

I wish there was more digital computer networking going on like AX.25 or something similar but encryption is forbidden and the population of ham radio is not interested.

I for one would love an HF slow speed "irc" mesh network or something similar.

> encryption is forbidden

Encryption for the purposes of obscuring the meaning of a message, which provides a bit of wiggle room. For example it should be permissible to send a message signed with a private key and then include the public key to decipher it along with the transmission to prove the transmitter is the identity associated with the keys. That should be enough to have something IRClike on AMPRnet...

Digital networking on the HF and VHF ham bands has been around since the early '80.

The ban on encryption isn't to stop hams communicating, but to stop the commercial users taking over.

The licensing authorities allow Ham radio to exist only because it is self regulating. And self regulation can only exist if there is no encryption.

And FWIW there is an enormous amount of slow speed digital traffic on HF now. Mesh networking is also popular.

VHF has been fairly boring for me except 2m sideband, which almost nobody uses. I had a lot of fun modeling shortwave antennas and putting them into real world use. Since I had decent antennas I also did SWL and things like oddity signal analysis, DXCC, antennas for lightning storms on Jupiter.

I still listen to Radio Habana Cuba english some nights on shortwave on my cheap chinese loop. I would like to get a QSL card from them.

Wow! Someone linked to my website, I can't believe it.

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