While I can appreciate the desire to maintain order in the midst of chaos, and I can certainly see why radio is essential for that, I’ll never understand the people who say they’re into ham radio because they don’t want to be censored or intercepted in a time of crisis. Ham radio is insecure by design. Your dox yourself every time you give your call sign.

Oh this screenshot was taken years ago. I got my extra ticket in 2021 (first licensed in 2019). I just keep coming back to it because of how on the nose it is.

I’ve actually been away from the hobby for the most part for about 2 years, and am trying to find ways to get back into it.

Yes, I am talking about Lemmy posts.

Texan here. We learned Mexican Spanish (seseo, yeismo, ustedes for everyone, etc) It’s been years since I had to use it for my job but IIRC there’s a difference in the subjunctive verbs as well.

There are also distinct varieties of Spanish spoken in the US that differ from Mexican Spanish. As a general rule, if a common word has a similar-sounding English cognate (often false cognate) the cognate will be used. truck = troca instead of camión, concrete (as in cement) = concreto instead of hormigón, carpet = carpeta instead of alfombra, to park (a car) = parquear instead of estacionar, and so on. This is from my years working as a bilingual call center agent.

I wish I could find the quote, but I believe it was an old issue of QST (1914 I think). The writer spoke in almost religious terms of his experience tuning around looking for other stations, comparing it to disembodied souls floating through the ether searching for others to commune with. I wish I could feel the way he felt, but I’m too habituated to casual intercontinental communication.

The closest thing I can think of is my experience of the early web, where I was able to see the weather conditions at my grandparents’ house thousands of miles away.

While there’s no one right way to learn CW, there are many, many wrong ways, especially if your goal is to copy in your head.

The trick is to build a mental association between the rhythm of each Morse character and its corresponding letter.