I Was Banned!

GIJoeBob

Shared on Fri, 10/13/2006 - 11:06
A few of you might know that I am a licensed ham radio operator and have been for about 7 years now.  I enjoy the technical aspect of the hobby and there is always something new to learn. Now, most people think of Vitalis wearing geezers hunched over ancient vacuum tube radios when they hear "Ham Radio" but that is not reality. There are a lot of cool technologies being developed in the Amateur Radio community and perhaps I will go into those here in my blog in the future.  For now I will tell a different story.

Until recently, the two major internet communities for ham radio users have been QRZ and eham.net.  While those sites are great for the most part as are the people that use them, there are a few users that I would characterize as bitter old farts that long for the good old days and poo-poo anything new or creative.  They also tend to be socially inept and have poor personal hygine.  It is because of people like this that HamSexy was created.

HamSexy was created to be a hipper alternative to the other internet communities out there. In their words:

"Hamsexy.Com is a popular non-commercial website and internet forum devoted to the promotion of Amateur Radio. In addition to discussion and fellowship, it also works with erasing the rather negative stigma that Ham Radio in today's society (it's an irrelevant, pointless hobby populated by overweight social misfits, police wannabees (also known as "whackers") or ornery old men who are resistant to any change in the hobby)."

They also have a wikipedia entry here.

These are a few examples of people and things that are hamsexy:





Yes, that antenna tower is coming out of the top of his helmet.



This car belongs to a person called a "whacker".  To a whacker more antennas = more coolness.


When I first heard of HamSexy I thought this was just the place for me. At the time I was doing a lot of public relations work for Amateur Radio and I thought this would be a good way to appeal to younger people (In ham radio circles, a 30 year old man is a young man) and keep in touch with amateur radio users that might not frequent the other web sites.

Things were a lot of fun at first with a lot of irreverent humor, funny stories and pictures and the occasional run in with some crotchety old ham that had had enough of our poking fun at ourselves. I even had one of the site owners on my Xbox Live Friends List.  However, eventually things started going down hill.

One of the site owners didn't like the fact that I posted pictures in my posts, or at least said I posted too many. Even though everyone else thought they were a hoot he didn't like it. When I say pictures I mean the images like in this thread.

Also, I had the gall to point out that one of the site owners that hamsexy was being just as arrogant and exclusive as the ham cranks they were making fun of. I didn't earn a lot of points by telling the emperor he had no clothes and I was banned.

Oh, remember the quote above?:

"...it also works with erasing the rather negative stigma that Ham Radio in today's society (it's an irrelevant, pointless hobby populated by overweight social misfits)..."

This is the site owner that banned me:





Pot, meet Kettle.

Comments

Walladog's picture
Submitted by Walladog on Wed, 10/18/2006 - 15:01
I think Randy should join the boards. Yes...now Im sure of it. :)
wareaglebeene1's picture
Submitted by wareaglebeene1 on Fri, 10/13/2006 - 11:16
No matter how you dress em up, you can't make a Ham look sexy.
biorod's picture
Submitted by biorod on Fri, 10/13/2006 - 11:36
OMG. Even that guy's mom thinks he's ugly.

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