[Elecraft] The State of Ham Radio

[Tom Azlin W7SUA]

Hi Jeff,

Sorry you are having a hard time with the the hobby.

I'm about 25 years into my General and over the years have talked to 
hams in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Ragchews 
mostly. That just takes time. Both SSB and digital. I do not chase DX 
but do rag chew as often as I can using SSB, JS8 and Olivia. Next year 
plan CW for Winter and Summer FD.

I simply ignore the WSJT-X supported modes and try to have a nice chat 
with someone every day. For FD I still use SSB and get plenty of 
contacts for the power and antenna am using that FD.

Hang in there. BTW, what is your call sign??


> On 8/31/2025 1:05 PM, Jeff Cook via Elecraft wrote:
>> I’m three years into my General, clicked over to 65 yrs this year. 
>> Main expectations were to communicate with people around the world. 
>> But my time so far has been local club repeater nets, and only 
>> accumulating HF & CW gear that I still haven’t really touched.
>>
>> My disappointments with the state of the hobby (as I’ve experience so 
>> far) are the emphasis on snatching contacts, and logging contacts (and 
>> re-re-logging contacts), chasing awards, and the de-emphasis on DX and 
>> ragchews. Smoke em if you got em, they’re just not my own reasons for 
>> getting into this.
>>
>> My surprise at the prevalence of FT8, and yes POTA, is not in what it 
>> takes to make a contact, but that they end at the contact itself, off 
>> to the next dozen. Again, just looking at what’s different from what I 
>> was looking for.
>>
>> I’ve got DX and CW in my future, but I keep hearing how dead SSB is 
>> and that doesn’t give me confidence for my long-term future with it.