Ham Radio Operators (from 5th Gen forum)

Brett: ... No worries Mike! Feel free to check in anytime! The net is open to any and all licensed hams. I checked in early (3rd person) and didn't get in there after that. Steve (N4UTQ) was speaking about his interfering with his neighbors TV broadcast antenna and then a guy from Edgewater has been trying to pull in TV from Tampa Bay, lost cause imho.
With the economy going south, more and more people are going to dump cable, satellite and web streaming expenses and go with over the air TV.
That could present a problem for Hams interfering with those signals in the future.


Thought I better move the topic to a more suitable place. With regard to the cable TV conversation, I have been advocating for years for people to consider switching to "over the air" TV signals. It's bad enough that TV providers charge us so much for their service but having us pay for the "privilege" of watching more and more TV commercials is pure insanity. Why do people do that? Wait, I do it (more accurately, the wife does it)... only because of the familiar phrase "Happy wife - happy Life.." She needs her sports - me, not so much in that the cost doesn't justify the entertainment. So one TV has cable (ugh) and the rest use cheap (really cheap) antennas....

Maybe one of these days we can hook up for lunch and do some 4runner talk or just see what we can laugh at in general..

Mike
K4FXR

 

Yea I completely agree. On a side bar to this discussion: I have gone round and round with AT&T for decades, and each time I think I'm rid of them they creep their way back in.
Back in the 70s and early 80s a land line was owned by Bell South, and all we had here was basic cable owned by Cable Vision. Costs weren't exorbitant and most people were happy.

Then AT&T bought out Bell South, and Cable Vision was swallowed up by a bigger provider, and costs went up. Service quality did not.
I noticed over the next ten years that AT&T was constantly nickle and diming us more and more, which was fuel for many heated discussions with their customer service.

So when I had a chance at a cell phone from a small provider called Aerial, I jumped and dumped my land line.
Then AT&T bought up most of the towers and all the smaller providers were having to piggy back from them, which killed Aerial.
They were then bought out by Voice Stream, which eventually became T-mobile.

When internet entered the picture AT&T had a monopoly on the DSL which had marginal service at best, but I resisted the DSL because of you know who. So when the world all but demanded internet capabilities I had to go back to bed with AT&T for a dial up service, but they made it insanely ridiculous to have just a basic dial up, with the marketing team insisting you have the DSL service bundled with your phone service, but I resisted, sticking with a basic dial up at 2/3 the cost of the bundle.

So when Brighthouse became a reasonable provider for TV and Cable internet, I dumped AT&T again. Well their service was OK for awhile but with a pixelating TV and internet bumping me off twice a day I dumped them and went with Direct TV and used T-mobile for internet. Once again I had found a reasonable connected existence for a reasonable price, with out AT&T.

Fast fwd a few years and AT&T bought out Direct TV and of course more and more channels went ala cart, and prices went up.

So I dumped their dish and went to a broadcast antenna. Also picked up Spectrum internet (old Brighthouse network) which seems to work pretty well now.

So now with a broadcast antenna I convinced myself I didn't need all those channels you pay for and all the commercials included, and I was getting used to it, until Covid.

Without getting into the politics, I got completely infuriated with a mask commercial every few minutes or the local news telling me to get used to my new normal. So I have NOT watched a Television program, sporting event, or a local newscast in 1.5 years and do not miss it one bit. You'd be surprised how much your critical thinking comes back with out regular TV programming. I keep the rig set up for hurricane season if I absolutely need it.

You obviously touched a nerve lol. Sorry for the rant.
Thanks for pulling this to off topic. I'm sure everyone else would have been thinking WTF!!
Definitely should grab a bite one day. I will be working in Naples and Orlando for a couple weeks, so maybe during the holidays.

 

...You obviously touched a nerve lol. Sorry for the rant. Ya think - ha ha ha. I feel ya for sure. My wife and I keep our finances separate - she pays the cable bill and also the ridiculous price for Florida Today - she's just old school but its her $$. I'm old enough to remember when the draw to cable was "no commercials" - sure it was only like $15 a month and maybe only 20 or so channels but there was value there - today not so much. I have 3 grown daughters who do not do the TV thing at all and their kids seem the better for it (well, one one is kidless..). My son is in Italy and I suspect they do whatever tv there is that's broadcast in English. Dad can survive just fine without TV but I do have to have my internet. You mentioned AT&T which is what we (wife) currently subscribes to - AT&T has twice in the last 15 years paid us $500 (real money) to switch to their service which probably greatly influenced her decision to leave Spectrum. The most recent $500 incentive went to the purchase of batteries for our solar system but she's been complaining lately of the increased monthly costs so hopefully I can wean her off the (satellite) again and hubby will cheerfully pay for the internet... Brett, I honestly don't know how to do the private msg thing on this forum - if I did I would provide a contact number. K4FXR

 

In the upper right you'll see the tab "you" and in that window you'll see "conversations", then in the upper right you'll see "start a new conversation".

I'll send you one in a minute.