It's a gigantic hobby that touches a lot of different nerdy things. First of, there's a wack-ton of science you can just dive straight into, with a lot of lite

It's a gigantic hobby that touches a lot of different nerdy things. First of, there's a wack-ton of science you can just dive straight into, with a lot of literature around because ham's been around for a long time. Are you in to EE and hacking? Cool! You can build your own radios! Are you into pushing boundries? DX (chasing long distance contacts) is for you. There's QRP (super low power) where you can talk to an amazing amount of people over morse code with just 5 watt and a deadnuts simple transmitter. It's like making a cellphone with a 9v and an altoids tin and talking to someone halfway cross the country. There's also the civic duty aspect, there even folk with just handie talkies (walkie-talkie-sized ham radios made for shorter-distance trasmission) can do their part in a natural disaster. But above all that, there's a really hands-on feel to making something out of bits and bobs and suddenly someone is talking to you!