What is a good hobby/skill that most people should give a try, and why so?
What is something like a hobby or skill that you belive almost anybody should give a try, and what makes your suggestion so good compared to other things?
Ham radio. It's a lot of fun and has something for everyone. I like the outdoors, so I took my portable gear to a park and operated Parks on the Air today. There are all kinds of digital modes for people who love computers, there's morse code, there's using kites to hoist your antenna, hot air balloons, talking with the space station, etc. All kinds of stuff. If you're the least bit nerdy, it likely has something for you.
My Dad was hugely into ham radio throughout the time I was growing up, and yeah, it was the quintessential nerd hobby before home computers came along.
Check out SDR dongles if you are on PC. I’d say it’s the most interesting $20 I’ve ever spent. It uses an HDTV tuner and you can use CubicSDR (or similar) to visually see all of the signals out there.
Agreed! I bought an SDR dongle on a whim, set it up on a raspberry pi and built a homemade spider antenna with some PVC pipe and old coax I had on hand. I started tracking aircraft with it using an easy walkthrough for setup from FlightAware. I can see and track planes from 220 miles away.
The fact I got that setup impressed myself, so I bought another SDR dongle, built a second antenna and am tracking boats/ships with it.