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Comment by stolenmerch | Hacker News Reader

I got my Technicians license about a year ago but have struggled to find much to do with it. I check into my local nets every once and a while, but the repeaters are nearly silent otherwise. The CW privileges are ok but hard to use. Seems you need a General to do all the cool stuff. Any other technicians here who have found a great use for the license?

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Don’t discount 10m voice or digital modes. You can absolutely work the world with minimal equipment and power on 10m, especially when the sunspots are active.

Not from US so I'm not sure but I think you can access the 10 metre band with technician? If so, doing Parks on the Air or Summits on the Air could possibly be something you might like.

Even with Technician you may be able to do POTA or SOTA successfully on VHF.

If you have a decent view of the horizon, definitely look at satellite work. Bouncing an APRS packet off of the ISS would be a great place to start.

I joined my local SKYWARN to get a license to do storm spotting which all happens on the VHF bands. We get a lot of severe weather where I live so this allows me to be on those bands more often than I otherwise would.

But I do agree, the real meat of ham radio is when you get your General and get on HF. It opens up the door to the rest of the world, not just your local city.

my first few contacts were POTA contacts before that was a formal game. Just take your radio with you wherever you go and try to dial up repeaters or VHF/UHF simplex call frequency. for POTA formally you have to contact via simplex but you can coordinate on a repeater.

DMR has a lot of traffic and you can get a decent DMR handy-talky for about $150 so it's worthwhile.

Yeah activity is really really low compared to the 80s especially on VHF and above. I don't do anything below that for lack of antenna space. So it can be boring. Digital is a bit better because it links repeaters in large groups.

But the heydays are over. During the 80s/early 90s it was really hard to break into the chat when I was driving to work. So busy. Back then there were no legal issues with speaking into a microphone while driving either. So it made the morning traffic much more fun.

But then the internet came and the whole "speak to people all over the world for free!" thing really lost its shine. The home computer before that did a lot already too (until they came on the scene pretty much all geeks were hams)

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