Ham radio Amateur Extra. The license after Technician and then General.

The RTLSDR is an easy way to see if you'd like radio or not.

Nice! There's not many new hams these days. When I was young it was basically what everyone technical was into.

Thanks, it's an interesting hobby. Technically interesting, but unfortunately I think a lot of the politics of it turn people off.

That happens in every hobby. There's always people declaring themselves king of some hill and making things toxic. I've been in a lot of hobby organisations and it's always the same. In a commercial organisation these people get reported to HR and kicked out but volunteer orgs are much less likely to throw out someone who does a lot of work for free.

I've seen it in ham clubs, makerspaces, etc. It's just what happens. The best thing is having a rock solid code of conduct.

And yeah it's technically interesting though I really miss it being on the bleeding edge. That hasn't been the case for decades. The commercial world can send a gigabit per second to a phone but we're stuck with 9600 baud APRS (or 1200 even sometimes)