Amateur Radio

@Sendpicsofsandwiches @emilvolk 100% yeah. Not being doxx'd asap would be great. Zero interest in the meantime.

Too bad WHOIS privacy/protection never came to HAM?

I wonder if the way to go is to start with the premise of "It's a way to communicate" and work backwards. Better tooling could make it more amenable to new users, and also help make specific use cases more compelling. Once users have he reason you want to be in the ecosystem-- which I suspect, for many people, might look more like a community than a bag of one-off contacts-- then it justfies going deeper into better equipment and technique.

Discoverability is a huge thing. For example, a cheap SDR, even receive-only, is a magical thing, but you end up getting a waterfall full of "what's this weird burst" and jumping around the dial trying to chase where the action is. I suspect better software could really help there-- a UI that decodes digital modes and CW in the right place, and archive received signals might make it easier to track the activity and reduce the problem of "I tuned elsewhere and missed something interesting"

If you start with one of the cheap 2m/70cm HTs, you might be able to find a local repeater, and once you work your way through the fidgety UI, even send a transmission. but are you just going to find empty air much of the time. Again, it's hard to find the action, and make sure you're actually being a positive contributor. I think this has been a problem for me; I got licensed, got my little HT, but now I have the choice of either listening to static, or waiting for a conversation and hoping I have everything configured right enough not to be an annoyance. Maybe better guide websites and scheduled events can help minimize "listening to static" disappointment times.

I could see a fun community project being an autoresponder bot-- in idle times, it would listen to an advertised frequency, detect speech and CW signals and respond with signal quality reports quickly and conveniently to make it easy for a new user to make sure they've got their equipment set up right without barging into a conversation. I know there are ways to test propagation, but a lot of it is "go find a second device and pull up a tracking website"

There might also be room to think of ham radio more as a "transport protocol" than as the main draw. CW and some digital modes feel like they could be packaged up in tools that more resembled modern IM/chat tools to increase accessibility and encourage understanding of best practices. (For example, let the software handle things like regular identification and responding to requests to change transmission characteristics automatically, or at least by providing helpful affordances) Or even a "dashboards and logs" paradigm for recieve-- let the software decode hundreds of hours of signals and then you can crunch it into interesting and useful visualizations.

I admit some of this could be seen as "dumbing down" or steering towards specific narrow paradigms, but that doesn't have to be the entire universe. It could be the equivalent of AOL or Compuserve to the open internet-- making sure that you can get value out of the experience early on, so people can transition to the broader open platform as their needs and skills grow.

As a youth interested in ham, I couldn't agree more. It's been surprisingly difficult to find stuff for beginners who know pretty much nothing. Even having studied for the ham exam, there's still a huge gap between that and the generally available information.

Frequently bigoted old men. I'm in a very liberal area, and still, hardly a day goes by where the morning "check in" calls don't take several very problematic detours about trans people or crime statistics or both.

What is a digital node?

This is very one sided. There's SO much more to ham radio than voice.

Maybe the question is "How do we get people to think that ham radio is more than just a voice call?"

I beleive you could send a dank meme to the iss with digital.

🌎🧑‍🚀🔫👩‍🚀

The name means nothing to today’s youth

Story time: When I was a kid in the late 90s, there was a fad for toy walkie-talkies at my school. I was obsessed with seeing how far I could get my signal, which wasn't very far given the likely minuscule power.

The teachers decided to capitalize on this trend by inviting a representative of a local ham club to speak at our school. I was absolutely floored when I learned you could talk around the world. Two things kept me from pursuing my license at the time. There was still a code requirement, and nobody for the life of me could tell me what lunch meat had to do with wireless communication.

If you're in the US, you can test online! https://hamstudy.org/sessions/remote

I do agree that the test itself could be tuned down a bit, especially for the tech license. hamstudy.org also has all of the test questions available online to help you study.

Are you eligible for a US license? HamStudy.org and study for the Technician’s license. Memorize the answers. Then when you are passing practice exams with a solid 80% or better, schedule your remote exam through the HamStudy website, take it, then get on the air.

I did my Tech from a beachside resort in the Philippines during the peak of the pandemic.

You can do it!

My country just introduced a super-beginners license that can be done with basic high school physics. Of course, severe limitations, basically, a "Baofeng license". Still great idea.

This exactly. My brother keeps trying to get me into it. It's hard to even take the test let alone how boring it is to study for. I want someone who's passionate about it to explain it to me. I also have hella ADHD so that's a factor for me personally lol.