Same. Rushed my way to Extra class license by feeding on EM fascination, enjoyed meeting some super-cool tech-oriented locals (in particular retired telecom engineers) and then slowly faded out as the less-interesting but super-talkative people droned on about cats and grocery stores and their particular equipment. I went on to start learning Morse Code and wrote a little trainer program for it so that was fun as a brain skill but the HF bands from my urban townhouse can't get past the HV cables right outside my window and I can't be bothered to go set up a tree-based antenna in a nearby park very frequently. Even when I do get on HF it's impossible to find anything but contesting it seems. I heard ragchewing happens in Morse Code but never got good enough to keep up.
The amateurradio subreddit seems like a pretty cool place to find like-minded people. Seems like cheating but you can get on there and ask people far away if they can hear you on certain frequencies, etc.
The emergency preparedness element seems cool too but that's naturally populated by some personalities too. I guess that's humanity for ya.
> enjoyed meeting some super-cool tech-oriented locals (in particular retired telecom engineers) and then slowly faded out as the less-interesting but super-talkative people droned on about cats and grocery stores and their particular equipment.
If it's any consolation: Those "uninterested complaining old men" were there even in the 70s, when I got started. Hell, it's probably the same bunch of guys. :) So don't let that deter you.
I've found those people in tech, motorcycles, beer brewing ..geeze they're everywhere.
that said .. I've found just as many if not more of the opposite - welcoming people who are genuinely happy others are joining "the club" and taking part in a shared interest.
I'm on the path to getting my first license. I have done the studying, but now I need to find a club willing to administer the tests...if the hobby is to survive clubs really need to jump on 'new blood'. It's amazing to me that many of the regional clubs have domains pointing to dead websites, that are still registered as the correct contact by the governing body!
The old man image is going to be hard for the hobby to shake off whilst this remains true.
Dead websites aren’t confined to amateur radio. Facebook has dramatically reduced the incentive to maintain a website for clubs, restaurants, any number of other organizations.
I don’t find that to be a positive trend, but I don’t see any easy escape.
When I started communicating locally, my thrill was squashed by uninterested complaining old men who thought my equipment was not expensive enough.
But radio theory and engineering, that's great stuff worth learning.