Note by @fastfinge

Michele Feltman Strider @michelestrider@mastodon.social

"It would be a shame if all that money went to the Tophams! They will fly higher than ever!"

You close the PBS app. You've been hiding from the heat/supporting your local public media station for days. But even the gritty crime dramas are starting to sound like Masterpiece Theater. The other day you used the word "dowager" unironically in conversation. You need to do something else.

You're interesting and creative. It should be easy to make your own indoor, non-screen fun. You need a hobby.

Michele Feltman Strider @michelestrider@mastodon.social

You decide to take up Ham Radio. It sounds like a fun challenge and useful skill in the event of a global apocalypse.

As with all cool hobbies, the bar to entry is high. You need equipment. And instructions on how to use it. Maybe licenses? And others to practice radioing with/at.

You could start with a book and read about what you're doing before diving in. Or you could order a bunch of equipment and mess around until you figure it out. Or you could consult/learn from more experienced people.

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@michelestrider @MaryAustinBooks As a ham myself, I advise skipping the human interaction unless you know the club near you is safe. Too many people in the hobby are far right of Trump. Many examiners intentionally try to fail anyone they think is lgbtqia. Yes there are hams on the left. But you have to intentionally look for them because a lot of the hobby right now is taken over by preppers and the kind of guy who wants to do first responder cosplay.

Michele Feltman Strider @michelestrider@mastodon.social

@fastfinge

The little town I live in is about half retired aerospace engineers and half blue-collar MAGAs. Now I'm very curious about what our local club is like

@MaryAustinBooks

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@michelestrider @MaryAustinBooks Being retired aerospace doesn’t mean not being maga sadly. Also, I notice about half the guys who worked in the field want to do something else with retirement. So it could go either way. Maybe get a cheap scanner and scope out the traffic on your local repeaters? Radio is more fun with friends . So if the people you can receive aren’t people you want to talk to, the only pleasure left is learning electronics. And there are cheaper ways of doing that.

AN/CRM-114 @flyingsaceur@ioc.exchange

@fastfinge @michelestrider @MaryAustinBooks a cheap scanner is great for knowing what’s actually going on and doesn’t require a license

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@flyingsaceur @michelestrider @MaryAustinBooks And today’s cheap scanner is far better than expensive scanners from 30 years ago. Cheap in this context being in the two hundred dollar range. If your having fun, spring for an antenna upgrade. If it’s still fun, then decide if you just like dxing, a term for people who just try and pick up the farthest stations and weakest signals they can. If so, your path will take you to 900 dollar shortwave sets and roof mounted antennas. Or if you want to transmit yourself, your looking at studying to pass one or more licensing exams. Once you get licensed, you can spend anywhere from a hundred dollars to a hundred thousand dollars on equipment, depending on what you want to do: anything from chatting with people a city over to bouncing signals off the moon.

AN/CRM-114 @flyingsaceur@ioc.exchange

@fastfinge @michelestrider @MaryAustinBooks for the aspiring ham you could go with the Uniden Bearcat BCT125AT. It’s analog only but you can regularly find them used for under a hundred bucks

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@flyingsaceur @michelestrider @MaryAustinBooks The main issue being that everything not ham today, like police, fire, etc is on some sort of digital trunked system. Analog only is fine if your only interested in listening to hams. But scanning is sort of a sub hobby of its own. And if you want a full taste of that you want something digital.

Joe @not2b@sfba.social

@fastfinge @MaryAustinBooks @michelestrider I know several hams who despise MAGA and all its works, so there are plenty of good ones out there.

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@not2b @MaryAustinBooks @michelestrider Of course there are. The problem is determining if "the good ones" and "your local ones" intersect or not.