> isn't that useful anymore Depends on what 'useful' means. When I got my novice ticket as a teen after learning Morse from a paper-tape machine, it was the st

> isn't that useful anymore Depends on what 'useful' means. When I got my novice ticket as a teen after learning Morse from a paper-tape machine, it was the start of a long, enjoyable technical learning curve. That's what I talked to other hams about, that's what I read QST for. I experimented with the bands and propagation (day, night, sunspot), tried different antennas and feedlines, different modes. I listened to the old-timer groups rag-chewing on 80 meters; mostly gear-talk. I listened to the utes to figure out how they worked, what they were for. When I got a computer, I had to learn to use interrupts to do baudot <=> ASCII conversion. FM, repeaters, DXing, contest country-counting, QRP ... all enjoyable as experiments. Hamming began with experimenters, and will continue with them. Beats watching your favorite films chopped up to sell you shit, or listening to FM-autopatch all afternoon.