grendelt

I'm into ham radio which, as a hobby, skews to an older demographic. Does just having a stimulating hobby actually slow decline? Most of the fun of ham radio is learning - it never stops, there's always something else to discover. I'd guess that it's the learning, searching, and connections you make that provide the benefits. Unless being in nature is a requirement, but then you have plenty of retirees that go RVing - do they experience the same benefits? I doubt that's as intellectually stimulating as birding or radio. Maybe.

No need. Hams haven't been using eBay for quite some time. We have other gear-for-sale boards that provide at least some modicum of assurance of who you're dealing with (via callsigns and semi-reliable ways to confirm someone's email). The feeling is, if you get scammed by someone and you have their callsign, you can call them out for it on some of these ham-public forums and put them on blast. Others will be less likely to deal with the ne'er-do-well.

The sites are not at all "cutting edge" or even aesthetically pleasing. Like most of ham radio, it's functional and that's about it. Aesthetics are almost non-existent in the hobby.

eBay serves (served?) a wide, public audience. Hams don't need that wide of an audience, just a targeted audience. I'd venture to guess QRZ.com probably has the most buy/sell traffic, then older, has-been sites like eham.net and swap.qth.com catering to the old timers that don't want to follow the traffic trends that left for other sites.

The thing with ham radio is the population is quite small to begin with. The sheer number of hams is like 1% of any population no matter how you slice it. Country, state, city... and that's just those that are licensed. How many of THOSE are interested in buying gear online or shipping gear when selling online? Not really even the majority of the small community. THEN you further cut that down because hams are a stodgy crowd that resist change. So anything new often has a long run up for adoption. Even longer to become a known entity in the community.

Surely something else could replace QRZ.com eventually, but no time soon that I can imagine.

The upshot is there's been an incredible reduction in the amount of utter crap listed when searching for ham radio gear. Instead of countless pages of Baofengs and all manner of accessories, I can actually find some gear.

When I first saw this shared on the ham radio email reflectors, I went to eBay to have a look. I was actually enticed to buy a radio I hadn't seen or considered prior. That posting is only visible now that the noise floor has dropped dramatically.

I've read (and recommended Design), I'll check out Don't Make Me Think. Thanks!

I mean, you can TRY... just "that's how we've always done it" doesn't mean it's bad. Blogs and news sites always post stuff at the top to stay in the F-shaped layout. Chats do the opposite. Services don't conform to any of that (each web dashboard has its own unique layout).

I just find it curious why all the big players in the space all somehow came to use the same UI. The same font choice and same Projects, Recents, Chats layout on the left side seems beyond mere chance. (Kinda how the Soviet's Buran orbiter somehow magically came to look like the exact same design of spacecraft as the NASA's Space Shuttle. Surely no peeking or copying took place.)

If US folks are watching a rocket launch and they're wearing light jackets, it's Vandenberg (which doesn't publish all their scheduled rocket launches.)

There's not a ton, but why not toy around (at least with A/B) where the chat prompt is at the top and the conversation flows in reverse chronological order.

Claude appears to at least _try_ to have a different aesthetic. Gemini is using Google's own in-house typeface.

Just seems weird there's not more experimentation and seeing what sticks than just doing what your competitors are doing.

There sure are a lot of eggs in that East basket.

> This technology is especially useful in the civilian space for search and rescue, disaster response, airsoft events, and any disconnected communications scenario.

Airsoft?! Huh?

So long as it's a true Montessori and not just in name only. The number of programs I see touting Montessori, Classical, and other models is wild. Usually it's charter and private schools that say one thing but do another.

> Also no one is talking about how exposed we are to Taiwan.

We aren't? It's one of the reasons the CHIPS Act et al get pushed through, to try to mitigate those risks. COVID showed how fragile supply chains are to shocks to the status quo and has forced a rethink. Check out the book 'World On The Brink' for more on that geopolitical situation.

Headline should be "Tea app spills the tea on users"

You don't even need full duplex. Just an HT that will do "split".

This is the way.

QRP for FD is like going fishing without a hook. You better enjoy the scenery and getting away from home because you're not going to bring in much.

> Field Day is fun for the planning, deployment, and operation of ham stations in the field. Some community outreach, some teamwork, some emergency preparedness, and some good practice.

All things that can be done at any other point during the year and you have the added benefit of being able to hear other stations.

> This is a great time to be on the air

Actually it's not. It's just wall to wall QRM. You can't exactly setup on a single frequency and call CQ without some asshat setting up right on frequency. I abhor Field Day because it's chaos. POTA, state QSO parties, 13 Colonies, Museum Ship Weekend, those are my speed.

Most every ham club that sets up for Field Day talk like they're doing "public service" and "outreach", but then they post up at some obscure location quite a way away where most any 'public' would be. The scant visitors they get are either ignored or greeted in an overly excited way and then every old timer wants a chance to impress upon the visitor their view of radio which invariably runs off all but the most determined visitors who can see past all that. I've been to over a dozen different club field day events across the country and most of them are pretty cringy.

---

The best was Tucson almost 20 years ago because my wife and I happened to be tent camping on the same mountain peak where they were setup. She retired to the tent early, I played radio well into the night after the daytime RF pandemonium died down. In the morning one of the club members who also runs a restraunt made everyone omelettes to order on his catering flat top.

One of the worst was Palm Springs RATS. Their setup was at their EOC and closed to the public. I had to essentially "prove" I was a ham to even be allowed in with them. (I told them my callsign but that wasn't enough. "Hi. I'm <callsign> in town for work and thought I'd drop in to do Field Day with you guys." "Do you know anyone here?" "No, I'm just in town for work." "Well, this is a ham radio event." "Yeah, it's Field Day. I'm just here for the week ahead and thought I'd come play radio with you guys." "...and you're not a member?")

Some club in DC/Arlington was pretty awful too. Again, there for work. Two old timers took turns mansplaining ham radio to me most of my time there. Nevermind I was a 30-something dude and with-code Extra. I was on their "get on the air" station doing CW and they kept talking at me while I had headphones on copying callsigns and listening for a break in the pileup.

These days I just don't even both going out because I've been disappointed so many times. Maybe I'll give it a go this evening to yet another new club's setup and see what new form of disappointment awaits.

SiriusXM tried to weasel out of Lifetime subscription obligations and lost in a class action.

Are these big national-brand window companies that provide "lifetime warranty" just cashing in today and hoping for the best (bankruptcy) exit strategy later when all their installs from this generation fail in a couple decades?

Not installers, but companies like Pella, Window World, et al.

It's one of the first things buyers should look at. But they don't. They check out the kitchen cabinets, bathroom fixtures, and lovely floors and wall finishing.

So many toroids.

Interestingly, when discussing WHOIS with my networking students, I discovered .edu WHOIS is not (cannot?) hidden. I suppose EDUCAUSE either requires WHOIS to remain open or they do not offer information hiding.

Doing some WHOIS lookups, we found a point of contact at a university, called the network admin said hello and launched into an impromptu network admin interview. It was cool stuff. I emailed him later in the day to apologize to and thank him for being a good sport about the whole thing. He (fortunately) found it all rather enjoyable.

I used something like this back in the day to run Winamp when CarPCs were a thing (to play MP3s before MP3 player stereos came out).

If I knew what I knew now, I'd have done it so much differently, but it was the late 90s/early 2k and we use what we know.

I did the same at my grandparents in Crosby, just north of Baytown. That land was passed down through the family going back to our ancestors who were part of the Old 300. The Czechs that moved into the emerging area now known as Crosby passed along amazing recipes like kolaches and my grandmother befriended the wife of a Czech coworker of my grandfathers - now kolaches are absolutely part of the family recipe book.

Driving through Giddings you can still see signs for the annual Wendish festival. Pondering what that was all about I did some Googling and learned about the Wends as I drove through.

This smacks of Exxon...

The big merger coming in the 99 being the creation of ExxonMobile which would create duplicate documentation systems spanning the dates the author gives.

POTA is what made me get more into CW. I'm not 100% CW and I do POTA activation videos on YouTube (when I remember to bring my GoPro with me on trips).

I typically use an Elecraft KX2 and Chelegance MC-750 vertical (and you'd be hard pressed to get me to switch to another antenna. Sure, an EFHW packs up small, but getting it up in a tree requires more time/effort/kit)

I've also activated with a truSDX, QMX, and MTR3b. Behind my KX2, the QMX is a great little CW radio. The truSDX is alright, but the QMX is superior.

> Whereas a Hot Wheels is designed to race down those iconic orange tracks, and often feature wild customizations or complete fantasy builds, a Matchbox is more realistic and accurate.

This is exactly what I've noticed with a little one that loves toy cars. We often end up getting Matchbox because they're cooler and not meant to only rocket down a Hot Wheels track. Hot Wheels are too much fantasy these days, Matchbox is where it's at.

I used to ask the same thing back when car stereos were all the rage --- I wondered why I couldn't get shortwave or SSB or Air/VHF reception and the answer lies in use-case. Yeah, you and I might eat up this super niche product, but the market on the whole would not. Just look at what electric car makers are doing with AM radio. They're saying "screw RFI problems, we'll not filter those and just remove AM reception from the car radio because who needs that?" The answer is a larger slice of the population than would want other radio services. Even Apple never enabled the FM receiver feature on their chips from Qualcomm. It's all about the time spend designing it, ensuring it doesn't cause issues with must-have features, is intuitive to access/use, _and_ aligns with buyer demands.

With ham radio making up less than 1% of most countries' populations, the need just isn't there. (Most folks you talk to are doing good just to even be aware of ham radio, let alone actually be a ham.)

> This would be amazing for backcountry communication

At 1W, you'd be better served with little FRS/GMRS radios. Better still, for less than the cost of building this yourself, you can buy ready-made a Baofeng UV-5R for under $20. The antenna is a little crummy, but you can buy that and _still_ be under the $30 build price. Further, the Baofeng isn't supporting a whole operating system so the battery will last much longer. I wouldn't want my "always-on" phone draining its battery until I need to transmit to someone. 1W is only going to be useful to hit repeaters in an urban environment - but because it's 2m (and not 70cm), it's even less likely to be all that useful beyond a neat/fun build.