No worries! It’s a cool hobby. Getting licensed was a bucket list item, as nerdy as that sounds. Still gotta learn Morse code but I hope to one of these days. Seeing some old heads tapping away at a local HAM event was pretty damn cool.
I did - I’ve got my general license. Missed extra by 2 questions despite not studying for it whatsoever.
Honestly I’ve been doing this for like 2 years now and I’ve not really keyed up and transmitted in the amateur radio sense, just GMRS walkie talkie stuff with the homies. Still, it’s super cool being able to listen. Picking up satcom stuff is just neat. I also take it to the airport and listen to the pilots talk with tower/ground crew.
One of these days I’ll transmit for real, but I have no problem following the “LURK MOAR” guideline as applied to amateur radio as I learn the culture.
You can buy a cheap Chinese HT like a Quansheng UV-K6 for like $40. These have open firmware and there’s a bunch of custom options radio nerds have whipped up. Get the USB programming cable even if you’re not doing custom FW, makes programming frequencies and tweaking options much easier. You’ll also need a license and in the US, HamStudy.org has the exact questions from the test. There’s a ton of YouTube channels you can watch and books you can read for general purpose radio knowledge. Then it’s just a matter of getting a proper antenna and pointing it in the right place at the right time; there’s free resources online, paid apps, all that is out there and it’s just a matter of wanting to learn it. The actual hardware you need to get started is really cheap these days.
You’d be better served learning how to do it yourself. It’s not hard and it’s a pretty cool skill to have (amateur radio).
I’d argue that it’s very important, especially since more and more people are using it. Wikipedia is generally correct and people, myself included, edit incorrect things. ChatGPT is a black box and there’s no user feedback. It’s also stupid to waste resources to run an inefficient LLM that a regular search and a few minutes of time, along with like a bite of an apple worth of energy, could easily handle. After all that, you’re going to need to check all those sources chatGPT used anyways, so how much time is it really saving you? At least with Wikipedia I know other people have looked at the same things I’m looking at, and a small percentage of those people will actually correct errors.
Many people aren’t using it as a valid research aid like you point out, they’re just pasting directly out of it onto the internet. This is the use case I dislike the most.
At least some editor will usually make sure Wikipedia is correct. There’s nobody ensuring chatGPT is correct.
If you tell someone that fedi instances are like email providers and that your instance is transfem.social, that creates three expecations in your audience:
1)The main, or possibly only, way to access your fedi account on a desktop is through the transfem.social website.
2)The main, or possibly only, way to access your fedi account on a smartphone is through the transfem.social app. This app is completely separate from the apps that could be used to access a fedi account on another instance.
3)The primary difference between transfem.social and other fedi instances is the UI of the website and app.
Frankly, I don’t think this is that big of a deal. First introduce them to an instance, then once they figure that out, show them the apps and other ways to access that instance.
What are the space/bandwidth requirements? I’ve got plenty of space on my NAS, sounds like it could be a decent project.
Can’t recommend spinning up a second account on a smaller instance enough. It’s made the experience so much faster than it was using my account on .world
Radio is the OG fediverse and I want to promote decentralization and self-sufficiency. Amateur radio is a lot easier and more accessible than you might think.