"Dee Flint" wrote:

Must be unique to your area. None of the young engineers I knew ever had
any interest in "goofing about" with transmitters.

I wouldn't say never... occasionally I get a student who will express an
interest in some of our marine transmission gear, from a technical
standpoint, but I would say 99.99% of the 'interest' in it would be
classified as 'operational use'. In fact, I can only recall 1 person in the
past 3 years who has asked anything technical about the electronics gear.