I have personal experience from those two fields. Perhaps other fields are different. But trust me, you do not need a PhD to get observing time on 4 meter telescope.
I’m taking you at your word that you have experience with astronomy research. But that makes it impossible to take you at your word when you appear to lack the imagination to come up with observational astronomy you can’t do without institutional support.
Privately founded research instruments are different topic.
LIGO data are here: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/ligo-data
Xray data are also publicly available, I would suggest skyview https://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov/current/cgi/query.pl
Requests for Arecibo telescope are here: https://www.naic.edu/ao/scientist-user-portal/proposal-submi...
And his/her point is that hobbyists aren't a replacement for a class of professional scientists.
It's great that it's your hobby, but to made consistent advances there needs to be a credentialed class of scientists who spend their lives funding and creating the tools and techniques you use for your hobby.