I passed my General exam the same way a lot of people do: I memorized the answers. Not the concepts, not the why — the answers. Question pool goes in, correct letter comes out, and a few weeks later the FCC mails you a piece of paper that says you understand things you don’t. I’m studying for Amateur Extra now, and the...

When I joined the Rowan Amateur Radio Society, the club website ran on WordPress. It worked — until it didn’t, which is the whole problem with WordPress. So I rebuilt it as a static Hugo site and paired it with an AI maintenance workflow, on purpose, so that the next volunteer doesn’t have to be me. The whole thing is...

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,...