Ken Finney wrote:


This past Saturday was "Field Day", ham radio's national "holiday", think of
it as Oshkosh, but distributed across the country with the participants in
radio contact with each other. On a national level, they do all the right
things: alert the national media, have draft press releases for local clubs
to use, have lots of information for the participants. For the first time,
I went to a Field Day event this Saturday.




As a nonpracticing ham I saw all of those things. I got a letter from
the local ham group about field day last week. I got my ticket in 1987,
quickly progressed to extra class, all while in college. Setup a shack
while I lived at home and quickly got about 190 countries. Got married
and really haven't done anything since. I have a two meter radio right
here at the computer desk but only use it to listen to the aircraft
band. If you're fascinated by radio ham radio can be fun but for
everybody else it has exactly zero relavance to peoples lives.