LH0ezVT

Sure, and money grows on trees

Yeah, I don't understand this either. If someone offered me to make me rich by paying him 10 bucks on the street, I'd tell him to fuck off and evaluate my chances in a fight and/or escape route. But as soon as a computer is involved, some people's brain shuts off or something.

People != their government

Except that they're still mostly a democracy, and they vote for the shit.

Lobbying from a small nation with no money, resources or military power, that doesn't even buy our stuff and snuggles up to Russia for protection? I don't really see how that would work. It doesn't check out with the behaviour of US/EU other conflicts, like Israel or Armenia-Azerbaijan, where we immediately sided with the party that had oil/gas and bought our weapons.

I'm willing to have my mind changed, but the gut feeling doesn't really point that way here

You do realize that this hobby consists of nerds and pensioners, who sometimes spend thousands on being able to talk to other nerds?

If anything, you might need to politely stop people from over-sharing all the cool stuff they made.. :D

As always, the answer is "it depends" :D

Feel free to PM me or ask in a new post

10W at 2m, 70cm and 10m. Except for the 10m, which I have never heard anyone use (*), that fits pretty well with the idea of giving high school kids an aliexpress handheld to get them into STEM.

The ugly part is, you need to do the same regulatory and legal questionnaire that you need to do for the larger licenses.

"N Lizenz" in Germany, for reference

(*) I just remembered that 10m is basically CB, but Ham. So if you find/inherit an old CB radio and want to experiment, it might be a really cheap way into the hobby.

My country just introduced a super-beginners license that can be done with basic high school physics. Of course, severe limitations, basically, a "Baofeng license". Still great idea.

The fuck? It seems I have been lucky. Most people here follow the "don't argue politics" advice.

Check out a local club. Literally, check it out. If it is full of arrogant assholes twice your age, leave. If they are cool but you don't fit in, ask them for advice. There are so many retired radio operators who are doing it to stay "in it", or retired engineers who finally have time and so on. Most of them are very happy to info-dump about their hobby.

It is fine for ham radio's original purpose: technical experimentation and connecting people. "Don't discuss politics' is a long-standing Gentleman's (woman's) agreement for a reason.

If you want to encrypt, go for the ISM bands. Lora, meshtastic, whatever happens at 433 MHz, hell even at 2.4 GHz a few 100mW will get you quite far with the right approach.

The difference is, your stuff will be type-checked. No experimentation, no building the crazy antenna idea that will be surelu fine according to your back of the napkin math.

Unfortunately yes. People wanted this. They still want this. But people were also cheering for like, Mao even after he put millions of his own citizens into the ground, so who knows