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.
______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[email protected]
This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Message delivered to [email protected]
