Soldersmoke

I've recently been revisiting the Soldersmoke Podcast. I remember listening to it in its early days, and on and off in the intervening years. I didn't realize that it's been running no for over 20 years!

Before I started to listen to the more recent episodes I thought I'd go back and find the early ones,

and I found there's an archive https://soldersmoke.com/ of the complete set of them, going back to Episode One in 2005.

I downloaded the first 100 episodes - not such a mammoth task as the early ones aren't in very high quality, with quite small mp3 file sizes - and I've been playing them while driving to and from work.

Tonight on my way home I was listening to Episode 17, from 2006, still in its formative period with Bill M0HBR (N2CQR) and Mike KL3R (SK) and I was shocked to hear….

I forgot that I was an email contributor & I don't remember what I'd written - but it's fun to think I was there near the start.

Listening to the latest few episodes I'm less enthusiastic - so much talk about getting help from AI, and so much talk about 100W amplifiers (and even bigger). The obsession with AI seems peculiar, and I probably won't be hurrying to listen to new episodes.

But I'm still enjoying going through the archive and remembering a simpler time when just a low-quality MP3 file, recorded off Echolink, was enough.