4 ms·

I think you are searching for explanations in the social realm while the truth is all to obvious. Ham used to be about making connections with the guy sitting

I think you are searching for explanations in the social realm while the truth is all to obvious. Ham used to be about making connections with the guy sitting on the other end of the globe. That's a 100 times solved problem, much more reliably and with much less effort than ham could ever provide. The second thing is ham is about making your own stuff. An AM/FM rig? With SSB? Your own amplifier? That used to be cool long ago when equipment was expensive. Today the equipment is all DSP, software defined. Little chance to lay your hands on, unless you come up with a new SDR like the chinese ATS25 or a malachite rival. Ham is not dead, it just has a much reduced user base because of how things turned out to be. Edited typos

alibarber 5y ago
Hmm - I got into Ham radio nearly 20 years ago as a teenager who loved making electronics. I couldn’t afford to buy the expensive things at the time, now I could probably buy a high-end high power rig and not really feel any financial hit. But I haven’t because it’s still cool to make all those things, and I’m still struggling to get them to work, but am learning and feeling so amazingly satisfied when they do. Also, you sort of can make all kinds of amazing SDR things yourself with even modest microcontrollers and DDS ICs. It’s just a hobby like any other, people still spend massive amounts of money and time on classic cars - they’ll never compete with or better a new Hyundai or something to get from A to B, but that’s missing the point.