2 ms·

I know this post is a day old, so nobody probably will read it anymore, but I am still curious. All this stuff sounds interesting to me (buying and learning ne

I know this post is a day old, so nobody probably will read it anymore, but I am still curious. All this stuff sounds interesting to me (buying and learning new equipment/techniques/etc) and I can see the possible benefits of emergency preparedness. But what I don't see is how this is really a viable hobby (for me). It seems like the daily practice of it is... boring. If I want to talk with people, I can use the internet. On the emergency preparedness front, hell, just buy a $50 handheld radio and learn how to use it, and throw the thing in a safe spot (along with the manual and extra batteries) and forget about it. What are the real payoffs as a hobby that you practice frequently, I mean. I don't mean to be dismissive. Amateur radio clearly has utility in specific circumstances, but I just don't understand why, after a day of browsing reddit and HN (and working!), I'd want to sit down to the radio and try and do the same thing with an antiquated piece of equipment. I mean, I'd love to be convinced. I love tech just as much as the next guy.

barrow-rider 8y ago
It is boring. I got into it because I did electronic warfare in the military. But it has its uses. Plenty of other stuff is boring and mostly useless, e.g. most of the raspberry pi stuff I've done. A $20 Google Chromecast or Roku is wayy less of a PITA than a rPi media center but I did it anyway to learn to hack it together. Same thing with a lot of radio stuff. And at like $30 bucks for a baofang and about a week or two of study for the technician license it's not a lot of cost or effort. So what would I do with it? Aside from a backup when hunting, just talkin w/ folks -- I'm in central Canada, so it's a far apart place with spotty internet access -- and I consider messing with radar tracking and even something more like a look-down-shoot-down style of radar, mostly as a hack to see if I can do it. Lot of demand for Radio Engineers if you want to do full-time cell phone or wifi stuff, too.

barrow-rider 8y ago

It is boring. I got into it because I did electronic warfare in the military. But it has its uses. Plenty of other stuff is boring and mostly useless, e.g. most of the raspberry pi stuff I've done. A $20 Google Chromecast or Roku is wayy less of a PITA than a rPi media center but I did it anyway to learn to hack it together. Same thing with a lot of radio stuff. And at like $30 bucks for a baofang and about a week or two of study for the technician license it's not a lot of cost or effort. So what would I do with it? Aside from a backup when hunting, just talkin w/ folks -- I'm in central Canada, so it's a far apart place with spotty internet access -- and I consider messing with radar tracking and even something more like a look-down-shoot-down style of radar, mostly as a hack to see if I can do it. Lot of demand for Radio Engineers if you want to do full-time cell phone or wifi stuff, too.