Frustrated over my new "hobby" of ham radio

Post Reply New Topic

^^^i am guessing you are fluent in spanish, to be able to tell apart latin american stations from cuban. are highly directional receiving antennas a thing on the AM radio band? i have a high-tech version of that inductive coil thingie that alaskan pipeline works used to receive stateside am radio broadcasts during contruction. do/did you use something like that as well?

Directional loops are very much a thing on AM broadcast band. I had a capacitive-tuned loop wound around a plastic bookshelf at one point, and I have a Ramsey SM100. These days I'm just using my HF wire antennas and my Yaesu FT-857D, or my Degen DE1103 for portable use.

I'm fluent in several languages. I listen to several Canadian stations from Montréal and one from Toronto at night, as well as the provincial nets on 80m (dialect can sometimes be hard to follow, though).

Best balanced news back during the Cold War: WCBS 880 in NYC, then turn on Radio Reloj Internacional (from multiple Cuban locations on multiple frequencies; easiest to hear was 790) for the other side of it.

you have a genius level intelligence, i am sure, to be able to do all those things with such facility.

Shhh... former Mensa member, but even smart NTs get boring after a while.

Off the bell curve in a few places with some weak spots in others (just like anyone else on the spectrum).

I've been around radios and electronics for over 50 years, so it's like a first language (whereas IT is a second language ).

my big weak spot is maths and logic, which is the big reason i never bothered with the exams, as the pre-exams whipped me good even after study.

I was really good at math up until 9th grade pre-calc. Got a really bad crush on a girl in class. Had no idea what to do about it. Made me totally useless in that class. Changed focus to foreign languages (one of the reasons I'm good is daily exposure via radio since I was a kid). There's a bunch more to that story for another thread.

Weak spots are remembering lists of verbal instructions "Send me an e-mail. No, really!".
Also, the characteristic deficits in body language perception and presentation aren't helpful in job interviews (British or possibly Vulcan- level understatement here).

Don't know as I'd call it quite middle-class, but if things I'm taking care of in the next month or so turn out as planned, then maybe I'll give you that. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I was considering getting into ham radio in the 1990s. Back then, there was a ham radio newsgroup and so I tried asking questions in it. The hams in that newsgroup were such a**holes about everything that I lost all interest pretty quickly.

Sorry you had that experience.

There are some old-timers who are all wrapped up in themselves and cliquish. It's one of the reasons we don't have more ham operators. Right now there are almost 800,000. That's the most we've ever had, but probably not the highest percentage of the population we ever had.

If you run into a group which doesn't welcome you, please look for another group which does. We're definitely out there.