Originally Posted By: musiclover
All well and good, but this leads on to the question, how much time really (especially at our age) does one want to practice and spend almost every free minute getting better at our hobby?


That all boils down to how much the end result matters to each individual, and only they know the answer.

Using me as the example, at one time I thought I wanted to get into Ham radio. They I found out that the testing included fluency in Morse Code. I had no desire to spend the time learning Morse Code, so the idea of being a licenses Ham radio operator died right there.