I’ll say the quiet part out loud: I’m not really in this for the conversations. Plenty of hams live for the contact — the rare DX on the other side of the planet, the ragchew that runs past midnight, the contest sprint. I respect it. It’s just not the part that pulls me. What pulls me is the bench. The soldering iron,...

I passed my General a while back. Now I’m studying for Amateur Extra — the top US license class — and this post kicks off a series where I work through it in public, from the perspective of someone who’s here for the electronics more than the operating. This first one is about why the Extra material is worth your time...