Maybe they are replying on channel 56 with the big rigs. Lol

You're not alone! Pinball and ham radio are two of my all time favorite hobbies.
Both involve finding, researching, restoring and the joy of using great stuff.
The past few years have been more into ham radio collecting than pinball.
Can't cram any more pins in the house. Restored radios can be stuffed under pins.

I've met several pinheads that are laso hams over the years. There are many
similarities.
Steve W6SSP

VA3CSG

I am a long time practitioner of the soldering arts.

OH3MVV
Not very active at the moment.

Yup, general class here. Active in Parks on the Air. The soldering and electronic skills cross over.

N8QXD checking in. Was never really into the distance stuff but then again I had what used to be called a no code tech license so I was licensed for this frequencies.

Mostly into local stuff on VHF/UHF. The frequencies around me have been far more quiet than when I got into the avocation 25 years ago

Licensed since 1976.

Was big into RTTY in college. Inactive since then, but kept the license current. Someday...

Found out I was enough of an old timer for a vanity 1x3 call, despite only having my General. Took W9 plus my initials. Tacky?

About this many. After they gum down their soup lunch its back to the HiFi for more crazy radio tech.

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I actually got my license last fall as part of my bucket list items, from back in my old Boy Scout days. I remember being so interested, and people in it seemed interesting back then. Saw the National jamboree station in the 80’s. Tried to get involved, and hook up with the local club. Bunch of old codgers (sorry, no other way to describe it) who did not have ANY interest to helping out a newbie, though I actively tried to find someone to help. Just was asking for a few hours of help talking through things, especially being in a hoa community it’s impossible to do anything outside was trying to figure out what to buy since my fb recommended baofeng only seemed to be a useful paperweight.. I had one guy try to hit me up to take him to a doctor appointment though

I actually went to ham fest down here this spring and mentioned my struggle to the AARL desk that was there, and I could tell they were just as frustrated trying figure out how to get new people in the hobby. I wish them the best, I don’t know how they can make this open minded.

Gave up and moved on myself.

Contrasting that with pinball, I’m fascinated about how open the community is to younger people (and I’m no spring chicken) even dealing with machines older than myself!

I think it's regional. There's a tech boundary to cross over as well. I live in a tech hub, so the kind of people interested in radio definitely skews towards people studying STEM. There are multiple daily nets on the VHF side of things, and probably about half of them welcome checkins via Zello/Echolink/etc, so even if you don't have a capable repeater nearby you can join via hot spot or even your phone. There is definitely an age difference between the weekly FM net crowd and the weekly YSF C4FM room crowd. My local YSF-only repeater gets DX checkins on a fairly regular basis.

One of the big things I've noticed, especially on the successful regular nets is that new callsigns are practically piled on in a good way- who are you, what are your interests, what do you do, who got you in, it's so nice to hear from you, etc. After coming back on the air after two decades off, I found it very welcoming. The other thing that I've noticed is a question I didn't used to hear very often: when someone checks in, the response is "Tell us about your day. How are you?" We're all under a lot of stress right now. Checking in with each other is something we should all be doing.

Who's up for a moon bounce?

I got mine in 2001 when I was 14 but almost never used. It was just a family tradition so i did it. I think my license expires next year now that I think about it..

I finally got my General class license a few years ago, and I see people use their HT's for emergency communications mostly. There seems to be a good social sphere locally for people that support public events with their radios, like marathons and cycling races. I think it's mostly gone the way of the dialup modem though Lots of nostalgia but much easier ways to do communications now.

I would like to finish out the Extra class test one day but that will definitely take some serious studying. I got into chapter 4 on the study material for that, and with my lack of a electrical engineering background, I found myself needing to read each paragraph in the electrical theory section about 2-4 times before moving on to the next paragraph hahaha.

Was also into RTTY back in the 1970's and jumped back in the past few years.
Have managed to save quite a few TTY machines from being junked. If you still have any interest
there is a 24/7 internet site streaming baudot news stories; www.rtty.com
Not as much fun as copying TASS, UPI, AP and many others that used to broadcast
news stories on the SW bands but a great way to keep these vintage machines
running. There are still a bunch of m15's and m28's lurking in the back of peoples
garages just waiting to be rescued. On the air ham nets exist too, one is the ClatterNet.

Amateur radio is a popular hobby for the young and the retired. There are a lot of folks
that had the interest but no one to help them out. Seek out local clubs
as there are usually a few that would be very happy to welcome anyone with an interest.
Just met a guy that finally got his license at 75 yo. I've been a ham for about 50 years
and many of those years was inactive but always came back.
Steve W6SSP

what have a told you about blowing up the moon???

Cait, check this out: earlier this year, students in Airdrie AB speaking to astronaut Chris Cassidy on the International Space Station: https://twitter.com/Space_Station/status/1298273936124153860

I have my tech plus license from years ago. Keep it current so I am legal on 2m and 440 which is where my interest lies. Rarely do I hear any traffic on the local repeaters. Rarely. Throw my call out there to see if there is anyone listening and no reply!! Back some 20 years ago it was far busier on those bands I. My neck of the woods than now. Problem is if we don’t use the frequencies someone else will and they will get reallocated!!

Not much activity here on 2, or 440 either. Upgrade your license and
join us on HF. As we approach the peak of the solar cycle HF is really
hopping now. And if you enjoy fixing up dead pins there is far more interest
in ham radio now for those of us that enjoy finding, restoring and using
vintage gear. Its more plentiful than ever.

And you are right...if we don't use the freqs others will. We lost a big
chunk of 220 MHz that way.
Steve

Convince your local club to link their repeater to busier ones in nearby cities. Adding low-latency high-speed internet at repeater sites isn't nearly as much of a challenge today as it used to be.

The local club in the province next to mine did something really interesting: they took a number of underused repeaters across the region and linked them. That isn't unusual, people have been doing that for years. The thing they did differently was that they took the uplink and decentralized them. All over the region, they have inexpensive receivers linked into the network. They all monitor the same frequency, but they have different CTCSS tones to open them up. That way, anyone with a low-power H-T can hit the "provincial" repeater. There's no more frustration for new users with a crappy Baofeng: if you're near enough to hit a local receiver, you can hit the whole province.

The strategy has paid off. The province-wide network has tonnes of activity and anyone can hit something local with a cheap transceiver. Someone was very forward thinking.

Another benefit to collapsing many quiet disparate repeaters into wide-coverage linked ones is that it freed up a lot of the underused frequencies that were providing overlapping coverage. Those existing pairs are now freed up to provide better DMR access, and if you're driving around the region you can use DMR seamlessly as if you were moving from tower to tower with a cellphone.

The above sounds not only neat but very efficient I would certainly love if repeater operators in this are woukd do something like that. Doesn’t even have to be state wide as you commented but maybe county wide or slightly larger. I’m afraid though that by doing this the local clubs that operate the repeaters would be afraid they were giving up control if their repeater. They’re kind of weird like that around here. Very proud of their own repeater.

I just have no interest in hf and hence why I bought an HT. Rarely do I turn it on as they’re never seems to be anyone out there. I mean occasionally but it seems rare. Certainly not like it used to be

People are still active on VHF/UHF here but the way it's used has changed. Rather than be glued to the radio all day for check-in-and-chat, our nets are quite active. It's not unusual for 25 people to check in to the Thursday night round table that lasts two or three hours, but then not hear a single peep on the frequency for the next day.

Lots of local folks have gone to DMR. Our local talk groups are quite active, but when people are at home they use their hotspot. When we're on the road, our equipment "roams" from one access point to another, and that's just while people are driving around. There can be several people chewing in the talkgroup, but you'd never know it unless you were tuned in with the correct equipment.

I got my Ham license at age 13 "WB3DSH". I haven't used it in quite a while though. Still have my rig. When I was a kid I used to have a big inverted "V" antenna on top of my parent's house.

My grandfather was a Ham "W9MTO" and my great grandfather was a Ham "W9ZAK".

I'm licensed but hardly ever turn on my radio. More of an emergency readiness thing for me