I was really glad to find this thread, been doing electronics, do it yourself since the 1959 when I was six and met my first HAM who shared enough to get excite

I was really glad to find this thread, been doing electronics, do it yourself since the 1959 when I was six and met my first HAM who shared enough to get excited, my paper route got me enough cash to buy my first decent used shortwave receiver. That and a wire I ran from my second story bedroom out to the roof of the garage, and suddenly I was listening to people in different countries and developing a serious interest in languages and putting pins in a world map of everyone I had listened to in different parts of the world. Eventually I learned some of those languages and went lived in some those countries. HAM radio opened the world to me. I just got my General license in June and with SDR radio and my computer started listening in on HAMs. I was shocked at the language and topics and conversations. Way different than 60 years. Started shopping for a kit traceiver to build, hard to find one, not like the old Heathkit days, when I built my first radio when I was 8 years old. It made me sad, then I started realizing that the nerdy kids like me were into 3d printing and Arduino and robots. However, they are going to miss out on the IoT, which will be driven by radios. The young kids are going miss learning the electronics and radio skills I got to learn before I was ten. Those skills took me into computers, programming and physics eventually. I am experimenting now with open source SDR and Lora mesh radio. Still alot to learn. If we really want our country to these type of skill taught early enough to open kids minds to what is possible and that they can design and build it. In my life, it only took one HAM to open my mind. The rest is history...