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I personally think that SWL’s and scanner listeners can make as good or better than the usual ham. After all, we go by that golden rule - we mostly listen, and perhaps catch so much the others miss*.

My Technician test was fairly easy because of what I’d picked up on by listening for so many years. The General is next, and it won’t be too bad for the same reasons. (I dunno about the Extra, though).

*I know some of the minefields, such as 14.275 or 3.843. :)

I studied for my license once but didn't follow through. I was studying due to necessity, the same reason I got involved in scanners. This was before the cell grid was really up and going. I have a situation where my wife needs to reach me 24/7. I bought a scanner to monitor public service namely paramedics etc. Then I bought a pager running in the 462 MHZ range. Worked great except sometimes it took me a while to get to a phone {if I was fishing on rare occasion} and I also used the scanner to see if I was still in tower range.

I finally began fooling around with a make shift outdoor antenna system on at my home. A purist would cringe but it's highly functional :>} A fringe area TV antenna elements mounted inverted so they point up and down. Next came the TV signal amp with 20 db gain. I run two scanners on it and use a splitter to stop feedback issues. That ones my toy but I keep the locals on a discone also running two scanners same type hookup.

One of the funnies things I heard happened one August on the 45MHZ Public Safety band. Skip rolled in and I heard "This is a nation wide alert" followed by a B.O.L.O. describing a lady then in the middle it stopped. A small nearby town from me had two on duty cops. They were accusing each other of playing a prank. I finally called them and told the guy in the office it was Skip that did it. He asked Who's he? LOL