There’s often a skill that seem interesting, but I can’t see doing anything for me in my day-to-day life. What have you learned that was a lot more effort than the payoff was worth?

  • PetteriPano@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Probably morse code. It was required for my ham radio license back in the day to read it at 10 WPM. I put quite a few hours into learning it through the koch method.

    At the end of the day I’m just not very interested in getting a lot of contacts. I just like building and tinkering with radios.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      19 hours ago

      My limited experience listening to ham radio operators with my scanner (listening to voice, not Morse code) is that when hams do get in contact with each other, they mostly talk about ham radios. Which, I mean, I guess is understandable, since it’s a common interest to all of them, but a lot of it is people who like building and tinkering with radios talking about building and tinkering with radios.

      • PetteriPano@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        That’s often the topic on your local repeater or 80m ring.

        Morse tends to be a bit more brief like “I’m in grid ab12cd and read you 599”, with a lot more abbreviations. Usually for competitions or just crossing off every square on your maidenhead-map.

    • olduffer @lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I have a full UK licence, and I’m thinking of learning it. It’s one of those things, it sounds interesting for QRP etc. However I’m the same, I rarely speak to anyone anyway!