I don’t really know how to start this post… before I took my license exam, I joined a couple of Reddit subs related to amateur radio. One is aptly named amateurradio and the other hamradio. I don’t know how both came to exist, but they seem to have a lot of crossover postings.
In both subs, I saw repeated posts about Baofeng radios. Some authors were ecstatic about the low cost, feature-packed 2-meter handheld transceivers (often called handy talky in the ham radio community, for reasons I’ll never understand. A ham will jump down your throat for writing “HAM” to describe the hobby or a person who enjoys it but they don’t mind sounding like a 4-year-old and saying “handy talky” instead of handheld transceiver. Go figure.)
Another group of hams does nothing but complain about the low quality of these garbage Chinese radios.
There are also some folks that sit somewhere nearer the middle of the pack — and they will often admit that they either have and use a Baofeng radio or they started with one when they initially got into ham radio.
Of course, after reading the first post I saw, I went straight to Amazon and found a UV-5R for $23 and change. Add to cart. Purchase.
The next day, I saw an even better one, the BF-F8HP. By better I mean, this one had 8 watts output power and 3 power level settings. This one was a little more expensive, at around $69. Aside from that, it seems essentially the same as every other Baofeng HT.
I was eager to jump on these ‘deals’ because I remembered the early 1990s and the cost of amateur radio equipment was by far the biggest hurdle to getting on the air. Even used equipment was pretty costly. My first rig, a 12-year-old Kenwood, cost me $450.
I picked up my first 2-meter HT once I returned stateside from Japan. I paid $259 for a Radio Shack HT-202 + Tandy’s extended service plan (TSP). All told, it was probably around $319. then I had to add on a battery double-A battery pack and a mag-mount antenna for the car. At the end of the day, it was probably $400.
And now, in 2020, I can buy a dual-band (2m/70cm) HT with all sorts of bells and whistles, an improved whip antenna, and a 3 year extended warranty for about $45.
I haven’t mastered the Baofeng yet, and, even though I’ve been licensed now for 2 weeks, I haven’t talked to anyone on 2m just yet. I’ve called out on 146.52 a few times but I am not getting a response.
I bought a replacement Discone antenna (I had one from Radio Shack back in the day for my scanners but the thing was great as an omnidirectional antenna for 2m, as I recall. I also have some challenges with accessing repeaters.
The CHIRP HT programming software bugged out and failed to program the radio properly. So I’m working on that.
I’ve also stupidly bought a tri-band Baofeng because I never owned a 220MHz rig before. It was just a pipe dream when I was on active duty. Now you can pick one up for about $30.
Next adventure, getting back on to HF.