Comment by bb88
1 day ago
There's a lot of people that are condescending to others, but they wouldn't see themselves as being an asshole. I see this often in Ham Radio and Electronics.
Their responses are curt, sure, but to them they are not outside the norm of the field.
I’m a licensed ham as well. These folk were even far outside the realm of the local racists and wife haters on 2m where I am.
(One reason I stick to CW - being an asshole on there is too time consuming)
(1) Never underestimate how strong feelings can have about how a repeater gets used, and (2) those feelings are stronger the less a repeater gets used.
I don't know if the worst example is the folks who got mad because I used to use my HT via the repeater to contact people in Canada 250+ miles away when tropospheric ducts were open
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_propagation
or the guy from the weather service who was mad that nobody on our daily net had information about a localized storm that really scared him because he saw what could have been a tornado on his NEXRAD. I told him, "look, none of us live in that spot and the only way you're going to get more information is if more people think ham radio is a welcoming hobby"
At least that’s interesting. There was an argument on our local net about growing strawberries. A new local ham chipped in and was told to fuck off and mind his own business. This resulted in what I assume was the new guy transmitting duck quacking noises on the same frequency as the net for about two weeks.
HF also requires a harder test, which is basically gatekeeping, I suppose. And a lot of people stick to FT8/FT4 because they can typically make more QSOs then with phone.
You can be an asshole on FT8, but it's harder to do.
> (One reason I stick to CW - being an asshole on there is too time consuming)
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