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Comment by jhallenworld | Hacker News Reader

"The goal is just to connect with people. You have nothing to talk about. You don't know each other very well. You're just seeing each other and acknowledging each other's presence"

This right here is ham radio in a nutshell. These kids need transceivers and should give morse code a try.

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I think the biggest attraction is the formation of the group with no established processes. Nobody telling you "This is how things are done around here". Exactly the opposite of ham radio

CB radio then.

It's the beginning of the rebirth of Web 1.0!

ham radio is the coolest technology in the world but sadly mostly allows you to talk to old people who have the same attitude as stack overflow mods - "you're doing it wrong"

It's basically a walkie talkie with people who really care about enforcing HOA rules.

I've been getting involved with LoRa mesh networking lately and there's a lot of that ham attitude there too but it seems to lean a bit more toward the hacker side of things, despite a healthy fear of the FCC enforcement mechanisms.

Considering the reach of a HAM radio, the limited frequencies, and the consumption of airtime while transmitting, someone needs to enforce etiquette.

Its also likely the older folk operating in HAM radio space, have a background in communication operations when HAM was a far more common communication device.

HAM is still awesome, I find it very interesting with the long distance, remote, communication challenges some people partake in.

>This right here is ham radio in a nutshell.

At least in my area, Boomers have done a great job gatekeeping amateur radio by making it so unpleasant to use that nobody under the age of 40 is willing to engage with that community.

I've bounced off ham radio at least 3 times in my life, each time repelled by grouchy senior citizens with too much free time.

Every generation has their Reddit mods.

Except with ham radio, nearly everyone you encounter is that mod.

My son had an interest in radios and what not, so our neighbor gave us all his old equipment.

First conversation was a very grumpy old man telling my 10 year old why he's an idiot and how the liberals and youth are ruining the country via not following unwritten rules in ham radio operation.

I've never seen my child lose interest in something so very quickly.

It is talk back AM radio without the presenter to moderate.

My actual ham radio club mostly chats on discord and email. We don't even show up much at the weekly nets. Radio is mostly for participating in events like pota, contesting and emmcomm.

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