So you got your technician's license? You get to do such fun activities as: call out on simplex FM voice for no one to respond or talk to the 70-year-old+ "repeater guys" who are on every day from 6 am - 6 pm about uhhhh radios, grilling, ex-wives if you want..... and then listen to the silence when everybody runs out of things to talk about in the presence of an "outsider" (someone who hasn't been on the repeater every day for 10+ years).
Not interested? That's fine, instead you can just listen to the activity on the repeater when they think no one else is around and hear interesting conversation topics like what the repeater guys would do if someone they were dating had an abortion including, but not limited to, "putting 2 between their eyes".
Not interested in even that? Okay, if your radio is capable of digital operation, you can connect to a system of linked repeaters and make contact with a different set of 70-year-old+ repeater guys. Once you make contact and talk a bit (maybe even have a good time listening to their stories if you're into that), you can look up their callsign and find their Twitter and find out they're REALLY RACIST and that probably the only reason they spoke to you in a polite manner or at all is cuz you have a "normal-sounding" male voice.
If this is what the self-policing culture of amateur radio is like (at least where I am in the United States currently) then we need to give many, many more Baofengs to unlicensed zoomers immediately
Anyway, that has been my experience so far in a rural area in the US. It hasn't been all bad (making contact with the International Space Station was cool) but yeah. I'm going back to a city soon, maybe it will be better there.
I really do want to get into this hobby and I love the technology (need to find the money sometime to do more packet stuff) but a lot of this type of stuff has been off-putting
You're right tbh
It rarely came up and ofc this being Hexbear it's tangled in like 7 layers of irony and sincerity, but the vibe I always got was that "TC69 thought" was beyond criticism and everyone who did have something to say in response was either in the group of transphobe wreckers who got purged by her (based, good (that they got purged)) and anyone left from that time who still remembered it, besides the """"legends"""" about her making everyone read based books, had stopped challenging it cuz of the aforementioned dogpiling
Until today, now it seems TC69 has stepped down again, deleted her account, and her partner has been banned and people are talking about it and criticising her in the YET-ANOTHER megathread
Wild day in niche bear-themed web forum history, the TC69 cult of personality has fallen?
I hope all this shit is entertaining to the Lemmygradians at least lmao