Amateur radio was very popular in the USSR. Amateur radio enthusiasts are not those who like to listen to the radio. They are those who like to assemble a radio with their own hands. And not only a radio. The concept is much broader. These are electronics engineers who assemble electronics themselves (a hobby).
Specialized magazines were published, for example, “Radio”. In my school years, I was subscribed to the magazine “Young Technician” for many years in a row. I read it “cover to cover”. And in each issue of the magazine there was a section devoted to amateur radio (called Correspondence School of Radio Electronics). This was my favorite section. If an issue of the magazine came without this section, I was very upset. They published some simple schemes there. They drew printed circuit boards, how to assemble them, and even the appearance. Often receivers. For example, I remember the “Egoistik” receiver on one transistor. :)
The skills I acquired while pursuing this hobby came in handy later. For example, I could fix a tape recorder or a TV.
The crowning achievement for me (also a radio amateur) was the independent assembly of the Orion-128 PC. And it was not an assembly from ready-made blocks (like inserting a processor into a motherboard or inserting a video card), but an assembly from scratch. Starting from etching the printed circuit board (I had to buy a board for the PC – it was very complicated). You need to get radio components (microcircuits, resistors, capacitors, etc.), assemble all this based on the circuit diagram. And the diagram was published in the Radio magazine (as you can see, the Radio magazine was not only about radio).
Assembling an electrical circuit (Unsplash License)
I remember when I was a child, I went to the House of Pioneers to the amateur radio club for many years. And already in high school, I chose the profession of an electrician at the UPK. After graduating from the UPK and passing exams, I received the crust “Electrician of the 3rd category”. UPK – Educational and Industrial Complex. Once a week we did not study at school, but went to the UPK and there we studied some profession (of our choice) in theory and in practice. The crusts are still lying around somewhere – I never worked in this profession (and did not plan to – I went to the UPK in electronics, because I just liked it).