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Do You Still Find Amateur Radio Interesting?
Marcos Eliziario asks: "Soon, I'll be taking the exams for a Brazilian, Class-D, Ham Radio license (Equivalent to an American Technician License) and, as I was reading about the subject, I wondered what today's geek thinks about amateur radio. In the past, Ham Radio was very popular among nerds, however with the Internet boom it seems that interest on radio, among the younger generations, is becoming dimmer each day. A lot of cool things can be done with radio, like building your own equipment, digital modes (btw, few people know that Packet Radio was born on the amateur's rank), and long distance contacts. The gear is cool, there's a lot of things to be learned about propagation, and today's Hams even use satellites to talk. Do you think that we could see a renaissance of Ham Radio among 21st century techies?"
Depends.... Some of us might find that stuff interesting, but don't know who to turn to to "try it out". That, and the cost of entry is so high (equipment, putting up an antenna [which you can't even do if you have an apt. probably]) that it really is hard to "get started". As unfortunate as it may be, Ham radio may be in a bit of a downward spiral unless it can figure out a way to make it accessible and seem relevant to the younger generation.
Wow, that sounds a lot like everyone's experience with Linux.