I never got into amateur radio, originally because of the Morse Code requirement, and by the time they finally dropped that ridiculous nonsense, I no longer had any interest (nor, frankly, the cash to buy the equipment, antennas, etc.). But I have friends who are hams, but I’ve never seen any of them doing anything like this (you’ll need to click on the link because I can’t seem to embed this video – either I’m doing it wrong, or there’s a bug in WordPress):
Yes, the subtitles (and what little bit of spoken audio can be heard) are in French, but you don’t have to understand the language to appreciate what’s being done here. This is the sort of thing that ham radio operators used to do waaaay back when, back in the days when they built most of their equipment at home rather than buying it from some equipment manufacturer (of course it probably helped a lot if they had access to a machine shop and other equipment). I think vacuum tubes were the last bit of technology I really understood (not that I would ever attempt to build one at home), although I’m not THAT nostalgic for them, since they had this nasty habit of burning out just when you were settling down to watch TV (and creating a whole service industry of TV repairmen – and yes, they were almost always men). Still, I have a feeling that if we are ever subjected to a major EMP (or perhaps a killer solar flare) that knocks out all the silicon-based electronics, the only equipment that will still function is the old stuff that uses vacuum tubes and discrete components, with nary a transistor or integrated circuit in sight!
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