You articulated what I was thinking, better than I could have. This is it for me.

I’d add that there’s probably a lot of habit involved, plus the fact that everyone else does it.

So not only am I not used to saying “today is the 4th of May”, everyone around me isn’t used to hearing it either and might think I’m being weird.

Could you elaborate? I’m dumb.

According to my pet peeve, this looks fine? I just scrolled past a meme that said something like “download a ISO” and I was like gah, no, it’s AN ISO.

I was thinking more like using an immutable or atomic os instead, like bazzite or bluefin. At least then you get regular updates, and core functionality is safely protected.

I’m coming back to Linux after a hiatus. I’ve spent most of my time with the Debian flavors. Not afraid of the command line, but not an expert either.

I’m trying out Bluefin right now, semi-immutable atomic os based on silverblue, based on Fedora.

On normal installs, I usually change and install enough stuff, that when it comes time to upgrade to the next os version, I’m sometimes not able to without introducing instability or it outright falling. The former more common than the latter.

Let’s just say I got used to reinstalling and starting from scratch, especially if I experimented too hard and broke something big like my DE or drivers.

So with bluefin I’m hoping to leave everything that’s core, alone. I’m trying to rely on flatpaks, app images, and distrobox for everything else.

So far so successful. I’ve only got a couple minor gripes, some limitations of flatpaks. But I’ve also only been at it for like a week, so we’ll see.

I guess my point is, flatpaks have a place 🤷‍♂️

Kind reminder that words have meaning, and your tone, to me at least, is coming across very combative. I’m just trying to have a conversation 🤷‍♂️

I’m sorry that $100 is out of your reach. The economy isn’t getting any better, it seems.

Truly it seems to me that based on your requirements for hobbies, this is one you may have to pass up. Which stinks, but sometimes that’s how it goes.

For a lot of people, $100 is still a lot of money, but not out of the realm of possibility for a hobby startup. If they were interested, that is.

All that said, going to a club and hanging out with people who have the equipment and would love to share and teach you, is completely free, and a valid option. My club’s radio room is open every Saturday for anyone who wants to warm some clouds with RF. If you’re not licensed, someone will sit with you so you can use their callsign.

There are some crusty old curmudgeony farts in this hobby, sure. But if you only ever look at the negative, you’ll never see the positive. Lot of chill people, some normal, some weird, all harmless, who want to help you 🤷‍♂️

City living is tough for ham activities, that’s fair. I’m in an apartment myself. But I go hiking and bring the radio, set up a hammock and vibe. But that’s not for everyone either.

I agree wholeheartedly, local repeaters don’t really have much of a place anymore. My buddies and I used to chat on our respective drives to work every day, and home. That was a fun way to keep in touch. But we kind of drifted out of the habit.

You have a transmitting SDR? That’s basically a ham radio, which is cool! And also technically illegal to transmit anywhere without a license as it’s not type certified. Maybe the ISM bands are ok? I can’t remember. Anywho I’m no snitch, just letting you know 🤷‍♂️

Bottom line I guess is yeah, sometimes it’s just not for everyone. And that’s ok.

There are some good ideas in there. I definitely agree more needs to be done, and there are definitely lots of bad actors out there. I’m not sure what the final solution will be

That’s a misrepresentation.

800 for the last radio you’ll ever need. I didn’t say start with it.

4 to 500 for a middle ground radio.

300 if you want to learn to fix it, it’s a feature not a bug. And it’s not for everyone, I never said it was.

You can get a 5w HF radio for $100, plenty to learn on, but can be frustrating if the solar cycle is down.

If you really want to get your foot in the door, get your foot out the door and over to your local club, they lend you gear, or even give it to you and has happened to me a time or two when I was starting. Or you can use their club station, or go out and do a POTA with someone. That’s what I do with my buddies kids, and they love it 🤷‍♂️

There’s plenty to do, nobody is trying to gate keep here. It’s just a hobby with a very high cost ceiling, and a lot of people who’ve been doing it for decades and built up equipment stores. It’s a lot to come into, and yes we do need to be more welcoming.

That’s fair, yeah important to make it clear what’s available and what will do the job.

A lot of people have a buy once cry once mentality, which I do agree with in a lot of ways, but that’s a hard sell.

RC cars is probably worse, because your equipment takes a literal beating. That’s how it was in the fpv drone world, 100mph into a tree and you’re done for the day, probably a hundred or two in damage, if you’re lucky. So n in that world too I flew cheaper stuff, still fun, but still hurts to take a crash and destroy a $50 camera it vtx, etc.

That’s where loaning equipment out comes into play. I loaned out drone stuff, to be used with me present and teaching. And that’s what I try to do with ham radio, come hang out, we’ll do a POTA or chase some DX. But I feel like a lot more people these days are losing social skills and don’t want to hang out, or as evidenced in this thread they don’t even want to use their voice to talk on the radio. There are digital options, but this complicates the lending/teaching/social aspect 🤷‍♂️

Again, I don’t have the answers, it’s a complicated problem in a changing world. But there sure are a lot of black and white opinions in here.

I guess that’s fair. My “it’s ok if it’s not for you” was more of a specific platitude for him because we’d already discussed some of the options available, and he’s already put some effort in and decided it wasn’t for him 🤷‍♂️

I agree we need to entice more people, I don’t have a good answer as to how. If someone looks into it, and makes an informed decision, then I’m not going to twist their arm.

One thing I’ve tried with my friends kids is to take them out and do POTA in the woods, let them run a pileup. They really seem to enjoy it, enough to stay studying, but not enough to follow through. What can you do? 🤷‍♂️

I mean, if you look at it that way, yeah. But to me the science is cool, and there’s a few other aspects that I enjoy as well. I outlined it here.

You can learn the technology for significantly less if you’re motivated, and handy. $100 for a 5w HF radio. That’s half the fun is learning.

But also, if that’s not enticing, then maybe it’s just not for you, and that’s ok 🤷‍♂️

There’s digital modes galore these days. Some people never speak ever on the radio.

See my comment here on why it’s so much cooler than two PCs over the Internet.

The problem is that cheap equipment literally performs worse, for you. And can make the frequencies around you worse, because of poor filtering or bad circuit design.

I’m not saying $4000 needs to be spent. You can get all the radio you’ll ever need, for $800-900, with an icom 7300. Now that’s not cheap, but it’s definitely in the realm of feasibility. People pay more for cell phones in some cases.

But, if you want a more manual experience, and save some money, you can get older Kenwood hybrids for $500-600. Heck I bought my ts530s for $300 when I first started, it had an issue where it was partially broken, but I was able to fix it just by cleaning a few switches with deoxit.

But baofengs, while they can work, and heck I own them. Some of them are pretty poorly built. I definitely experienced issues with mine, adding more antenna started making my signal reception worse! I later learned it was front end overload, from cheap filtering. But that’s besides the point.

I’m sorry your experience was so bad, and that people were rude to you. And it’s a shame you never got to put that donated equipment to use. It really is a fun hobby if you can get into it.

It’s not the access to the club or whatever, it’s how cool it is that it works at all. The science behind it.

Yeah you can call Japan right now, and your voice will get digitized, and it’ll travel thousands of miles over copper, fiber, microwave. It’ll go under the sea and to space and back through satellites, through millions of dollars of backbone and infrastructure. And that’s pretty cool, but also has become mundane. It’s so easy. But that infrastructure is delicate. Now I’m not a prepper or doomsdayer, I’m just saying, think about it it wasn’t there. Could you talk across the world? Across the country? Heck, across the state might be hard.

Back in the day, hams in Alaska would communicate with people back in the States to keep families in touch, relay information and well wishes alike, because it was all that was available, and it worked.

I got my license just before COVID, and one of my first contacts was over 6000 miles to Japan. Nothing between me and him but a piece of wire in a tree, and some radio waves bouncing off the ionosphere. His voice in my ear, milliseconds after he spoke. It was just… Kind of awe inspiring, and I was hooked.

Not just because I was talking to a guy in Japan, one with similar interests to me I’ll remind you, but because of HOW we were doing it. That’s what made it awesome.

And these radio waves are everywhere, all the time, passing through us every day. But unless you know what you don’t know, you’ll never know.

So I started playing with it more, different antennas, more power, fixing and building my own radios. There’s even games to play over the air, both related to the hobby directly, or just using it as a data backbone. You’ve got POTA, SOTA, fox hunting, digital modes, even Morse code is still heavily used. It was challenging to learn, but fun.

Now I didn’t go turbo nerd, I just did this for a number of years, pretty heavily, but I’ve eased off the gas now. I have a basic setup and I use it a few dozen times a year, maybe more. It’s still awesome but it doesn’t have to be your life. I have other hobbies. I’m a member of a club, because it costs like $10-20 a year, and they’re nice people. They’ve helped me and I’ve helped them.

IDK I guess all I’m saying is don’t discount it entirely, without knowing what you’re missing out on. It’s not just a means to an end. Just because it’s normally easy to talk across the world, doesn’t mean the hard way isn’t amazing that it even works, let alone that it still works and we still have access to the bands that let us do it. Even though corporations definitely want to take them.

But still it’s ok to not be interested in it 🤷‍♂️

If this is allowed, then the bands will become so busy they will be unusable.

Not with consumer traffic, mind, but illegal commercial traffic.

These bands are extremely valuable, and corporations, especially stock traders are literally chomping at the bit to get access to it.

I hear you, encryption would be nice, but it would literally destroy the hobby. Probably for more reasons than just the one I listed. Talking in the open air isn’t that bad, you get used to it 🤷‍♂️ it’s a hobby after all.

I didn’t know that about crowdsource, I definitely thought it was just another of the same. Glad to hear it isn’t.

I didn’t think about the increased resolution making the RAM increase more relevant.

Good note about the preheater, I honestly haven’t looked deeply into the procedure. Looks like you can get into a crappy preheater on Amazon for not too much. For a one off thing its not so bad 🤷‍♂️

Hey thanks for the write-up!

Glad I had it kind of almost correct 😬 Sorry if I implied that you weren’t popular enough to make it work. I really was just guessing based on the numbers and a vague idea of “I guess he needs x amount of money to make it happen.” I’ve been burned on a couple kick starters, so I was a bit pessimistic on what might constitute “success”.

I really do like the project, and my buddies kid heard about your project and bought it as well, he found it organically by himself, I was amazed.

I’m glad you’ve taken this personal project and put it out into the world. I’m excited to get my kit, I bought a clear shell and I plan to leave my LCD in the old shell, so I don’t rush destroying it.

An install service is a nice idea, to give more people access. But that also sounds like a lot of work, depending on how popular it is.

I’m fairly handy with a heat gun and soldering iron. I’ve kicked around the idea of the RAM increase, but I’m not convinced the performance boost is worth the effort and risk.

Anywho thanks again! Looking forward to more cool stuff from your way!

They just announced EU/UK availability!

Thanks!