i don't know any REAL hams that did not start by taking things apart usually toys tellephones or your dads broken radio ( ok so it did work but you needed the parts ) as a kid to build something else, could have been a transmitter/bug, something that beeps when your siblings come into your room made from an orp12 from a roadworks warning light or just something to electrocute your school friends,
i was about 10years old when i got into radio, my first homebrew transmitter was a car ignition coil two 6v batteries from a road lamp and key made from nappy pins,
within days i got into broadcasting, i was no george noory but i was on the air with my portable record player, two pencil leads, some wood, drawing pins and long copper wire pulled from a battery charger transformer to make a spark gap tx that i could hear with its raspy audio everywhere over mw radio,
the back emf smoked the stereo's output which lead me to use an old mono valve audio amp wired straight to the record players cartridge and a realisation of what happens when voltage on a coil collapses,
i will never forget the smell as my graphite burned away, or that if i let it burn too wide it started arcing across the fingerprints on the coils insulating cap,
my neighburs dad, an ex navy tellegrapher amused at my antics loaned me his pump key, the key his shipmates presented him when he retired, i remember it had his name on it with "SPARKS" inserted between his first and surname,
i made a cw transmitter from a kids electonics kit astable multivibrator keyed into my stereo line in, di di dah dit - di di da, thought i was MARCONI,
i would record my raspy transmissions on tape then send him the tape,
he would send me a tape back which i played at slow speed so i could decode it,
the other kind of ham,
the memorising answers to pass an easy exam black box operating g5rv buying yappers grumpy old men and spectrum policemen who buy everything and send their radios away for repair will never be real hams to me,
dxcc's don't mean squat if you don't have the solder burns to go with em,
if there had been no freebanding there would be no hams today