Anyone else interested in or licensed for amateur/ham radio? Here's a post for open discussion about amateur radio activities, licensing, tech and/or questions.

I have a tech license but don't do much transmitting. The process of getting licensed and learning about the associated gear and activities did give me exposure to a lot of interesting aspects of radio, many of which have various practical applications. For example, a lot of the knowledge and hardware I collected was useful in monitoring and interpreting scanner activity during protests. There's something to be said for amateur radio tech as a supplement to things such as emergency planning, tactical communication, monitoring/intelligence and to extend other tech such as drones. It's also an interesting playground to work with RF, electrical engineering, programming, small scale manufacturing and other disciplines.

The wider community of hams has a lot of knowledgeable people but a culture that I find often infuriating. There's a fair amount of open racism/sexism, gate-keeping and condescension to newbies, chuddy prepper types as well as just general clubbiness and lack of diversity. At the moment, theres not many avowed leftists within that hobby/community, but plenty of interesting tech! So hoping we can have some discussion here among hams or those interested in radio.

Please keep in mind that posting your own callsign is self-doxing so I suggest you do not do that here.