28 may 2023
Today, some thoughts about Amateur Radio:
I've been dipping my toe back into Amateur Radio this weekend. It's been a long time since I've done anything with it, and I've definitely had some hangups around getting back into it.
I started tinkering around with radio and computers in the early 90's. At the time, I was using a piece of software called JNOS to talk to other folks via packet radio using something called the AMPRnet. This is all a fancy way of saying that were were talking back and forth using TCP/IP over ham radio, and because the internet was in it's infancy, it was one of the ways that I could communicate with folks all over the world.
It's tied into my feelings about my grandfather, and masculinity as a whole. His basement was the typical "mad scientist" area growing up through the end of his life. All sorts of experiments and projects were always going on, sometimes at the expense of other things that could be going on in his life.
I also find it an intensely political hobby, even though there's a understood norm that we're supposed to keep politics out of it. It tends to attract folks who tend towards the right-wing, and I get tired of the intersection of second amendment and radio talk.
So I'm trying some new things. There's a Rainbow Amateur Radio Club, (rara.org), and I've joined. I've got a little JNOS server set up on a raspberry pi (not transmitting yet) that I'm tinkering with. I'm cleaning up and charging old equipment, and trying to figure out what I want to be doing with things -- what are the old interests worth dusting off, and what are the things that it's time to let go of?