Hi, I am Eric (they/them). I am a radio enthusiast. I got my ticket in March 2024, and I became obsessed with the airwaves. That obsession made upgraded to extra in June 2024. Now with my “license to learn”, I’m learning all I can about radio.
I was raised in South Florida, spent some time in Knoxville, TN, and now I live and love in Maryland.
My call sign’s suffix, “FNB” is a reference Food Not Bombs. They are a group of folks that spend a lot of time and effort feeding the hungry. When I lived in Knoxville, I was very involved with Food Not Bombs. DC is a bit far, but when I can I like to help out with the local FNB there. My time working with Food Not Bombs shaped me as a person, and my call sign is a small way of honoring that experience.
I am a queer non-binary, transgender person. Please use they/them pronouns for me. If that bothers you, move on, we don’t have to be friends.
I am a software engineer by trade, maker, crafter, activist, privacy advocate, and nixos user. When I can, I use free software, but I am not a zealot about it. It can be difficult to find ham software that works with Linux. I hope to help you find what works for me.
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Proudly “woke”
I want to make the radio hobby open and inclusive of people like me. It is no secret that it appears that the politics of amateur radio skews right.
My first month in the hobby I slammed face-first into this. At local club meetings, hams were complaining about immigrant invaders and wokeness. I saw a club officer with links to Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit in their bookmark bar. The Gateway Pundit has some very violent things to say about trans people like myself.
To say the least, I felt extremely unwelcome and unsafe in the hobby. That month as a ham, I became depressed and discouraged that I was not going to be able to do something that I’ve fallen in love with.
Fortunately I found two venues online that showed me that the radio hobby can be diverse and welcoming.
The first is Pride Radio Group The PRG’s discord is amazing. Through PRG, I even got to participate in my first special event in June, CQ Pride.
The second venue is mastodon.radio. Mastodon.radio is full of accepting and supportive people. The admins there do not put up with bigotry of any kind. I was actively encouraged by folks on Mastodon to stay in the hobby after voicing my fears.
After some encouragement, I decided that I was not going to let the bigots ruin my hobby. I was going to be unapologetic and present in this hobby. I was going to participate locally despite them. Despite my crippling introversion, I would do my best to welcome new people.
Proudly Making the Amateur Radio Inclusivity Pledge
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Why this blog?
I personally found that ham radio content swings widely in quality. It is a plethora of Y2K era websites, PDFs, or Youtube videos of dubious funding. I often found that when I looked for content online, I looked for two things:
- Analysis of product quality
- Personal experiences with ham radio
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Analysis
When researching products to buy, I often want to know things such as, “Does this radio put out the watts it says it does?”, or “What is the bandwidth of the antenna I’m considering?”.
More often or not, the answers to those questions, if they are answered, are buried deep inside of a video. While I spend unknown hours consuming ham videos, it would be nice to have a “just the facts” reference on a product.
I hope to provide those resources. I don’t have the means to purchase every product under the sun, but I can collate data for other sources into easy to reference guides.
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Personal Experiences
Another bit of content that I really enjoy are personal experiences of radio operators. When starting in the hobby, I had questions like, “What does a POTA activation look like?”.
I want to use this blog to provide stories of my experiences as an operator. This blog will serve as my own account of things I do in this hobby.
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My promise to you
Finally, my promise to you. I want to put out quality ham radio content. Here are my promises to you:
- I will never accept a product with a promise of a review. I don’t want you to wonder, “are they being paid to say that?”
- I will always cite my sources. If someone said something, they will get the credit.
- I will never sell your data.