Bill, good to have you back involved with Ham Radio. You'll find that things have changed, but there is a lot of exciting new things to have fun with.

Unlike some others, I don't sense any attitude other than "where are we now"? And that's a reasonable question. In PA and South NJ, APRS is the what's hot now. There is some DSTAR activity, but in general, Packet Radio in any given area is very sporadic and usually club-oriented.

Unlike the early 90's when we were all playing with Phil Karn's KA9Q, full-time connectivity to the Internet is the basis for support communications. DX cluster are mostly web-based, although you can connect to quite a few vie Telnet. The biggest reason for the Internet is to write logging data to sites like HRDlog.net or to map digital propogation via pskreporter or wsprnet.

So Ham Radio is a bit different with HF digital being the thing most highly developed now with modes like JT65-HF, PSK31 and Olivia. Even RTTY has experienced a resurgence in interest. Amsat is suffering with most of it's mainstay birds being off the air. QRP CW on the WARC bands like 30 and 17 is a hot area, one that I enjoy quite a bit. SSB is the usual collection of what-have-you. Sometimes great, sometimes decidedly not.

But the main point being, there is a lot of digital activity being enjoyed on HF these days. It seems to be in sync with the connected, digital media world that we live in, so no real surprise. As for age? Yes the older Hams who got their starts in the late 50s are into retirement now and have moved into homes that may not support large antennas, so QRP and digital or CW are their realm. Is there a reason to connect with a TNC on VHF anymore? Not really.

Anyway, welcome back into the hobby. It may not be the same as you remember, but if you bought a Yaesu 817ND, ran it into a random wire via an LDG automatic tuner, and connected it to your PC via a West Mountain Rigblaster, you can have as much fun as I do on PSK31, JT65-HF or CW as I do.

73