I got a general license in the US since it seemed like an interesting hobby, but haven't used it much. Sometimes I feel bad about that, and I've thought a bit about it.
Radios are fascinating to learn about, but our HAM regulations seem mired in the past and overly restrictive. You simply aren't allowed to do much on the amateur bands besides chatting with people.
For example, I don't believe you can cipher communications unless they're being used to control an RC vehicle. That rules out a lot of DIY-style projects. The regulations and terminology around automated "beacons" are also a tad confusing, and the potential fines are quite heavy.
And if you do spend the time reading rules, going to a class or doing flash cards, taking your test, buying a starter radio, and finally talking with some people on a local repeater...then what? Try to contact a different country or continent? You can, but talking to someone across the world feels very pedestrian in this day and age.
And while it is technically possible to set up a beacon for something like data collection or remote monitoring on HAM frequencies, it's much easier these days to use an off-the-shelf radio module. You don't need a license to use a $5 LoRa module with an arduino or raspberry pi, and there's no red tape.
It's too bad, because I really admire the amateur operators who step in during disasters to keep information flowing. But I can also see why HAM radio is sort of a dying art in the US; like many relics of an optimistic past, it's been left to rot for decades.
> You simply aren't allowed to do much on the amateur bands besides chatting with people.
Here's a fun thing you can do: 802.11b channel 1 is in the amateur band, so as long as you don't use encryption, you can use quite a lot more power than the 802.11 band would normally allow. (Remember that you should only use the amount of power you need, though.)
Our amateur rocketry group used ordinary wifi, amplified to 1W and run through a custom cylindrical antenna, to communicate between the rocket (breaking the sound barrier) and the ground.
When a social network is so thin, you need some way to bootstrap it. On the internet, a lot of that was random people making websites that were basically shouting into the void. A lot of it was bad, but some of it was interesting and it gave you enough reason to hang around long enough that you found other people or other people found you.
But on HAM, broadcasting is not allowed, so you can't shout into the void. Maybe there's some other way to get a baseline of chatter going on?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlieplexing
PWM would look weird.