@mnem: nice one
. If you don't tell them, they don't learn, and if they don't learn when you tell 'em then all bets are off
Yeah its nice but isn't Morse code dead and buried, thought that went out with the second world war and voice was the in thing in radio?
It was funny when the FCC dropped code here in the US, the crusty greybeards of ham radio bemoaned that the hobby was going to hell and die. By the way, I am a crusty greybeard, just not of ham radio. I have only been licensed for 19 years, still wet behind the ears to some and I am a 'low code' Extra. What actually seems to have happened is there is a bit of resurgence of code because now people don't have to learn it so people are learning it because they want to.
I wrote a big rant here about hams but by the time I'd got to the end of it the buzz from the earlier pub visit had worn off so I'm going to leave it as a simple comment: hell yes, exactly this. This is a hobby. It's all about want to.
Oh no wait, anger building, here we go again...
The big issue I found is more that there is a social divide which is basically "masonic style fraternity" and "people interested in radio technology". There's a lot of gatekeeping from the self-entitled fraternities which is what you see at the moment. It's 10x worse in person than it is on QRZ as well. I can't bear spending time in a club or talking to people on air really as it's the technology that interests me. Perhaps a stupid thing to get into? Well no because there's FT8, WSPR and CW among other modes I haven't investigated yet. CW is kept short and to the point. No MAGA vs RSGB hat discussions, no "who fell off a ladder this week" on the local repeater, no shouty Italians with 1Kw burners, just experiment and test (and play with TEA gear in the process). That's the good life. It brings purpose to TEA acquisitions as well rather than collect and clean. And it's all because I want to do it
But I didn't want to start with a massive barrier to entry which CW was and still would be to most people. So yes GreyWoolfe is right on the mark there.
Random thing. When I get a 3d printer one day, this is print #1: