I see where an ARRL Director in the Hudson Division has resigned the seat after some kerfuffle with management. What? Acrimony inside the hallowed halls of Newington, when did this start happening? And all over publication of a license manual. I’m beginning to believe there’s an ass of money to be made in the ham radio licensing business. Everyone, it seems, wants to write and publish a license manual, and a whole lot of them do. Here’s an idea, eliminate all amateur testing and include an Extra class ham license in every box of Cheerios. That would swell our ranks, improve heart health, and eliminate the need for license manuals. Think about it…

I’m weary from all this chatbot nonsense and the AI technology that underlies it. There. I said it. It strikes me as yet another shiny tech bauble with no redeeming value. We live in a world where even a dog turd, so long as its equipped with a USB port, is worshipped as mystical sorcery. Sorry, my tolerance for “new” things and the endless hype that surrounds them seems to be diminishing faster than my age is increasing. I hope this isn’t an early symptom of dementia…

A couple of years ago a friend mentioned an increase in his replies to calls of CQ being met with silence. “They call CQ, I reply, and they don’t hear me and stop calling”. I jokingly suggested the possibility that they were only interested in seeing Reverse Beacon results from their calls. Now I’ve met a number of hams who told me they do just that. One of them said, “I call CQ twice every morning and evening and hope to God no one replies. I only want to witness the propagation results of those calls on the RBN”. It’s more of the same with the WSPRnet enthusiasts who have fabricated interest and solid growth out of thin air and even thinner radio signals. Nothing wrong with that, but I wonder if old Hiram ever imagined a time when hams would prefer telemetry over communicating with others…