That's nice. But what's it good for?

With the advent of inexpensive and convenient publishing there has been a small explosion of books titled something along the lines of "N Things to Try Now That You're In This Hobby."  And certainly ham radio has its share of these.  Just this week another one was published, 99 Things You Can Do with Amateur Radio. It's an easy read, and it's easy to skip over some of the chapters that don't quite connect, but it's good nonetheless to see a sweep-up of ideas like this.  A similarly themed book is 21 Things to do After You Get Your Amateur Radio License, by the author of the No-Nonsense Test Guide series (item #3 here).  By the way, you can see the books' respective lists by clicking through the links above and using the "Look Inside" feature to read the tables of contents.  They are interesting in and of themselves, and are sure to spur new ideas.  They're fairly comprehensive, and honestly I'm having trouble thinking of much to add beyond "combine with your other activities."

This naturally segues into "so what's your list?" or perhaps even a sort of New Year's Resolutions / Less-Grim Bucket List.  It is that time of the year after all.  I'm not patient enough this morning to itemize 99 or even 21 things, so here's my big list:

0: More outdoor, portable, light weight, practical radio use in combination with other things I'm doing anyway.

"Um, can you be more specific?"  Right now, no.  But stay tuned in 2018 as even more improbable, bone-crunching activities – now involving RF burns – are blogged.

So what's on your list for the coming year?  Whatever it may be, that's what it's good for.