My brother will be so pleased to learn he’s a niche hobbyist.
Now, should we talk telescopes?
My late spouse not only built model airplanes and flew them, he also was a ham radio operator for many years AND he was into telescopes, going so far as to actually grind his own mirror for one.
I married an übernerd.
You certainly did. My brother built them but never ground his own glass.
BTW In Erie we had The Green Stamp Store. A showroom where you could cash in your stamp books for merchandise, my Aunt Katie worked there for twenty years.
My grandmother wanted to become a nurse, but her parents wouldn’t allow it. They thought it wasn’t respectable. (This would have been during the 1920’s, in the U.S.)
My mother was “restricted to campus” one weekend at college because she hadn’t shut one of her dresser drawers in her dorm room.
I inherited a bunch of books of Blue Chip Stamps and a smaller number of books of S&H Green Stamps. When I searched online in 2013, I found that S&H was still in the participation promotion business, but they’d gone digital. You could sign up online and create an account. Collecting seven thousand points from participating venues would get you a five dollar gift card to either Applebee’s or Starbucks. Higher point amounts had more options.
They had rules for getting credit for physical Green Stamps. “All Green Stamps submitted for conversion must include a notarized statement that includes a count of the number of stamps being submitted, the name of the store(s) where they were obtained, the location of those stores, your S&H Member Number (you will receive this number when you enroll with S&H greenpoints), as well as your name, address and daytime phone number—in case we have any questions.”
Also, “Once your Stamps are validated based upon the information provided in your notarized letter, you can expect to receive an update to your greenpoints balance within 2 weeks from the date of our receipt of your Stamp shipment.”
Since I had no idea which stores Grandma had gotten them from and when, I just chucked the books. It sounded to me like they were legally required to accept the stamps but not legally required to have a reasonable process for turning them in.
I suspect that’s why that requirement was in there.
One of my Big Brothers was all into ham radio, circa late 1950s-early 1960s. I was too young to have any idea of what he was up to, but I remember his extensive wall of QSL cards. And I remember him showing me his synchro-selsyn, which I mis-heard as “sinko seltzer”. In those days, there was no such thing as a “vanity” license plate, but hams could get a license plate with their call sign. My brother had one. For no good or obvious reason, I still remember it to this day: K6OAF. (Googling, I find it’s been reassigned to someone else now.)
My other Bigger Brother got all into astronomy, and had a telescope. One day he let me look through it, and he asked me if I could figure out why stars seen through the telescope appeared to move so much faster than stars seen with the naked eye. I think I must have been if 5th or 6th grade at the time. Being the larval Mensa genius that I was, I immediately figured out the right explanation!
Thanks for posting that callsign. That triggered my recollection that @N9IWP is some flavor of ham. Perhaps he’ll update us on what the hobby is like now.
I know people into ham radio today (as in “attend ham radio conventions as recently as 2019”)
In Quebec, you can still get a license plate with your ham radio call sign on it. I see them maybe a couple of times a year.
I do have a ham radio licence plate, and yes N9IWP is my call sign. Pro: I can use the same username all over the place (boardgamegeek, various game sites, etc) Con: Makes me easy to dox.
I am not very active, but I do participate in the local severe WX spotter (from my house). I do have a decent HF/6m rig but don’t use it often.
There are a bunch of interesting digital modes these days. I know some folks who are fairly active, and not all are 50+
Brian
My father had a ham radio license and got a license plate with his call number. I would occasionally watch as he contacted people.
I was just thinking about all these things in the dustbin were once common and would be included in movies as just normal stuff that people did. Like with ham radios, it would be pretty odd if a ham radio is shown as being used as a normal, day-to-day activity in a current movie sent in current times. If a ham radio is shown in a movie now, it’s because it’s a movie set in the past, or because it’s being used in response to a disaster and it’s this weird device that only one person can figure out how to use it. But I would imagine in some old movies, a ham radio was just something that some people had in their garage and the characters would make use of it for communication the same way we might with telephones.
Another example is a phone book. It would be pretty weird if a contemporary movie had a character go to a public phone and leaf through the phone book, but this was commonly seen in movies 20 years ago. So between 2000 and 2020, there’s a movie which has the last “culturally common” use of a phone book.
There’s always this:
Are CB radios still a thing? I remember cousin had one in the 70s and 80s and it was cool when she took us on a drive. And of course movies like Smokey and the Bandit they were featured prominently.
Last I knew truckers still used them. But they’d be real scarce for anyone else.
Applications for new licenses (in the US) are steadily up, but lots of the new activity is in digital modes, low power propagation, satellite communication, mesh networking, data transmission, etc. The traditional HF world has taken a hit both because of changing interest of younger audiences, and because the prolonged poor sunspot conditions have meant that propagation is really tough right now.
Are there still HAM radio afficionados in this world of the Internet?
My 74 year old brother is one. He’s in Naperville, Ill.