Advice for newcomers to radio

This blog was set up many moons ago, primarily to encourage newcomers into the hobby.  If I only ever encouraged one person into the hobby through this blog, that would be achievement enough for me.

Because it's a nice, sunny day, here is my very brief but very well-considered advice to newcomers this morning:

(1) Read lots of books and determine which authors are reliable or at least motivated by genuine curiosity.

(2) Spend as little time as possible - and preferably none at all - on QRZ.com; you will be lucky to find anything other than angry, racist, white old men spitting prejudice and ignorance there.

(3) Learn that the success of radio is more down to environment than equipment.  Open fields, lakes, and especially the coast, are places that yield Yagi-beating performance from 'just' simple wire verticals.

That's it for today!