One of the really great things about ham radio as a hobby is its diversity.
 That is, there is something in it for everyone.  Over my 55 years in ham
radio, I have enjoyed at different times about every aspect of the hobby,
from Rag chewing on the 75 meter phone band, initially using a DX-40 on
A-M, to stepping up to SSB using a Central Labs 10A barefoot, to chasing DX
on all bands running QRP up to 1500 PEP with an Alpha linear, from HF to
VHF and operating field day and contests, Working All States and then,
earning the DXCC.  I have built several pieces of gear from scratch using
my own design to building kits from Heath Kit and Globe when they were
still in business marketing ham gear.  I especially enjoyed designing and
building all types of antennas.  It has been fun meeting people at hamfests
that you have QSO's with for a long time but never met in person.  I've
burned my fingers lots of times using the soldering gun while building
equipment, and you learn really fast that you can never have too much
saliva on your fingers when soldering connections.  I've had my share of
failures, burned up rigs, and antennas that I could never make resonate for
some reason.  Speaking of math, I've found it necessary to use lots of math
when designing gear, figuring out the right values of parts that were
needed for specific tasks, and I have often used the Pythagorean Theorem to
compute how high my tower or the center of my antenna needed to be.  So, my
point is that there is something in it for everyone, and over time, you
will probably do like I have done and find different aspects of the hobby
appealing to you at different times of your life.  

My newest adventure is to figure out how to use Echolink and play around
with it.  Why?  Simply because it is just another aspect of the hobby to
check out.  No, it isn't ham radio in the traditional sense, but then,
using repeaters was very controversial when hams first started using them
too believe it or not.  When SideBand first showed up on the ham bands in
the form of double sideband, it was so controversial that it put the hobby
into a war, literally, a war between the -AM'ers and the sidebanders.
Double sideband didn't last very long because developers quickly figured
out how to filter out and suppress the unwanted sideband, either the upper
sideband or the lower sideband, depending on which band you were on.  There
has always been some sort of controversy; perhaps the most recent is the
debate over dropping the code requirements and in some ham's views,
dummying down the ham exams.  I'll have to admit to you that it was much
more challenging for me to take the General license exam back in 1958 when
I had to draw out all of the diagrams and schematics.  Since I couldn't see
well enough to draw them myself, it was even more challenging to try to
describe them to someone and have them draw them well enough so the FCC
Examiner could understand it.  To be perfectly honest with you, the Extra
Class exam that I took at the end of the 1990's was actually easier in many
respects than the General Class exam I took in 1958.  

I'm sharing all of this with you to encourage all of us to respect all the
different aspects of ham radio and the hams that enjoy all of these various
parts of the hobby.  I've heard some hams called "appliance operators," and
admittedly, I've used the term at times in the past, but some people just
don't have the interest in being ham techno-geeks like some of the rest of
us might be.  So, there is a place for all of us.

Ron, AC4HM