So how did I get interested in amateur radio?

I am in my early 30s. I have grown up in the age of mobile phones, the internet, being able 
to contact someone on the other side of world as easily as a neighbour and other such leaps 
of communication technology. Why would I want to use technology developed in the 1950s to 
listen to old men chat about their ailments when I could just call my grandad on my mobile?

The spark for my interest in engineering is simply my dad. He was a weapons engineering 
artificer on submarines in the Royal Navy for 30 odd years. Weapons engineering is a bit of 
a misnomer as it includes working on pretty much all electronic systems on board the vessel. 
This includes radio systems, masts, periscopes and much more. There was a point where my  
dad was given the offer of being deployed to teach in the Submarine School. To get himself 
ready, he gave me a practise lesson about the basic principles of how periscopes work. I was 
instantly smitten by the simplicity of the concept but complexity of the whole system. Who 
would have thought that you could stabalise the image? Who would have thought you needed to? 
I certainly had not thought about this at the age of 10. Spark 1 had happened.

Spark 2 occured while in school. Physics lessons were interesting but dull at the same time. 
There is a sort of oddness in that you have to study the fundamentals of waves without ever 
really understanding why. Technology lessons were always interesting and we operated on a 
rotation system to get a taste of the different areas such as resistive materials (wood and 
metal work), food technology (cooking), graphic design and then electronics. Electronics was 
fascinating. It took all this dry stuff we learnt in physics but got us to actually use it 
to do something. We made silly bits like swamp buggies which turned on when placed in water 
and a battery tester. However, we also learnt about radio waves. This suddenly made all 
those hours looking at water waves and playing with light slots vaguely interesting and gave 
them purpose. When we got to amplitude modulation and how data is added to a carrier, well I 
was all ears. This lead to my studying electronics at A level and then getting a bachelors 
degree in communication engineering. How we transfer data through waves is fascinating to 
me. It baffles me still how people came up with the various schemes for error correction. 

I finished my degree in a economic depression and so willingly took any job in electronics 
which I was offered. Through chance, I ended up at a company which designs and manufacturers 
control systems for jet engines. As time progressed, electronics being a job prevented it 
from being interesting. It just became work and I started overcomplicating things. 
Eventually I stumbled upon an article which discussed radio bits and it encouraged me to 
start reading around again. I was aware of amateur radio but thought it was all about morse 
code and having to talk to people *shudder*. Who wants to talk to people? As part of this 
reading around, I found articles about digital modes and the need for radio licences to play 
around with most frequencies. I had also realised that I didn't understand aerials. They 
were never discussed during my degree. Sounds odd but the majority of the subject matter was 
focused on modulation. There was little which concerned itself with what you need to produce 
a communication system. So I found a club which offered training and signed up. That was at 
the start of 2017. By the end of 2017, I had 3 different call signs for each of the UK 
licences - foundation, intermediate and full. It was a fairly mad year but worth it. I found 
that electronics became fun again. RF adds a curious element to electronics and requires a 
different style of thought in how to resolve the problem at hand. Of course, antennas are 
still magic but I at least understand how some of that magic works. 

Amateur radio is all about experimenting and playing around. You do not necessarily need to 
understand why it works so long as you understand how to avoid annoying those around you.