Rack, I don't know if you ever used BTB's, Blind Transmission Broadcasts, but when you talk about falling asleep to the sound of white noise...imagine manually scanning a range of freqs for 12 straight hours listening for the cleanest frequency.
As an aside, the guys who took the time to learn HF, regardless of their age, those were the ones who could make commo with anything. A guy who didn't put much or any thought into HF could mess up SATCOM. I "get" why SATCOM is preferred, especially to someone living out of a ruck, but HF will always be there. SATCOM nets are so saturated these days we're using comercial birds for a great deal of our data transmissions. The reality is that even when things work well SATCOM isn't a given.
Threads like this almost make me want to re-enlist.