Just wanted to create a post since I see so many topics on requests for info on radios.
First let me state that I am brand new to amateur radio. Ive owned a couple baofengs like millions of others, but didnt do much but turn them on and scanned a few times. I am in no way an expert and might even put up wrong info, but its from my experience only.
I just recently got my tech license and did about a month of studying for it. I used a couple apps and mainly just did it when I was on the shitter or sitting around bored. I also watched a handful of youtube videos.
First thing is that your equipment is absolutely crucial. Like most things in life, you get what you pay for. That goes for the actual radios to the antennas. There are 3 major gold standard manufacturers of radios. Kenwood, Yaesu, and Icom. They all are very similar but very different. They are the same in the fact that if all you use is basic analog communications, they will all serve you pretty much the same. The major difference between them is if you decide to use the digital communications parts. They all have their own different properties and procedures. Being that Im so new, Im concentrating on the analog portion so the digital isnt relevant to me just yet. Everything outside of those brands are either clones (which isnt necessarily a bad thing) or they are pretty much garbage. Baofengs are garbage. They are barely a step up from using a gmrs walmart walkie talkie. I almost want to throw the 2 I have away because they are so bad compared to the nicer ones. The nicer radios will be more user friendly, have more capabilities, more info on them when using the net to learn, hold way more channels, scan faster, and just plain work better. If I could compare it to something gun related, I would compare a baofeng to an M&P 15-22 and an actual AR15 or M16. Sure they are very similar, but they are very different at the same time. You wouldnt want to go into a battle with the 15-22 when you could have an AR for just a little bit more.
Antennas make a hug difference. Ive tried factory, to a couple different amazon ones, to actual good proven antennas. Diamond being the main one. Comet also makes a good handheld antenna. Supposedly Nagoya is a decent one, but I bought a Nagoya clone on accident from Amazon thinking it was a real one and it was dog crap. I tried multiple different kinds on my Yaesu and the Diamond and Comet were by far the best. There wasnt even a comparison in my experience. Amazon even sells these weird folding ones that are really long and then fold up to a smaller package but I saw reviews where they cut them open and found nothing but a tape measure inside. It seems to be one of the favorites that the "preppers" use but its really not a good antenna.
Ham exam tech license info. The test is basically a memorization test. If youre familiar with car electricity (12v), you will already be one step ahead. This stuff basically works off of DC. The best thing that helped me wasnt the ham radio license manual that I bought, it was an app called Ham Study and a website called hamexam.org. Both of them are free. Pull them up and memorize the questions and answers. Some of it you wont understand, but you can still memorize it and get your license so you can get more hands on to learn. The book is great for looking up stuff but wasnt much help for me in learning the info. The app has questions and if you dont know it or get it wrong, you can click a button that will give you the answer, explain it, and then sometimes give you a good way to memorize it.
For people that are really tech savvy with current stuff, you will find this entire system very antiquated. Which is good and bad. But sometimes it will be very frustrating at times. Especially at times like when using a computer to program your radio. The software and procedures are not friendly and they seem to take multiple unnecessary steps. It can get frustrating very quickly. I have chirp, RT systems, and the manufacturers version. All of them work almost the same and both are way more difficult than they should be. If you need to connect your radio to computer for programming, sometimes the drivers work and sometimes they dont. When using a cable, sometimes the cables work and sometimes they dont. Some are made for only upgrading firmware and not programming and some work for both. This is the most frustrating part to me. Its very time consuming just to get something to work correctly.
Here are a couple more things that helped me understand the basic idea of how it works.
- Power and antennas are crucial. The higher and better the antenna and the more power, the further you can transmit without a repeater (simplex-radio to radio).
- You can really only transmit about a mile or two with a handheld.
- Repeaters are like cell phone towers in that they will gather the signal all around it. So if you have a handheld, your radio is not transmitting all the way to the repeater as the repeater is actually grabbing your signal and bringing it back and then sending it out again with more power. When people run higher powered radios with those bigger antennas that you see in backyards, you can transmit much further and receive from further away.
- Without repeaters, the "prepper" idea of using radios is almost worthless. You might as well buy some walkie talkies.
- Its a lot harder to build a decent personal repeater than most people think.
- Different times of the year affect different frequencies.
- Sometimes its hard to get someone to help you with things and that is especially noticeable when not actually licensed. Lots of people will give you a surface answer, but wont explain the whys. Once you get your license, its like youre in the cool guy club and the answers are more elaborate.
- If setup, you can use different radios for different setups. Like using a handheld in a vehicle and connecting a rooftop antenna to it.
- You can actually send pictures and text messages using some of the radios, although Im not even close to that yet.
- There are probably somewhere over 300 different repeaters in Arizona alone. And there are ways to connect them and bounce from one repeater to another. So you can talk to someone from Phoenix all the way to Flagstaff or even further using them. I even heard a couple people talking that said they were in New Mexico and Tucson the other night.
- Check the website for the Queen Creek ARC and they have a calendar of "nets" where groups of people get together and chit chat. It will tell you what frequency to listen to so you can hear them.
There are lots of places where you can get your license and lots of times its cheap or even free. I got mine through the Thunderbird ARC and they were really awesome. Its in the NW valley and very organized and efficient. Everything was free there, but I joined the club to give a little. They use that money to do things like maintain and upgrade the repeaters that everyone uses, so its money well spent. Those things run into the thousands of dollars, so helping a little is appreciated.
Try to buy local. We have a nationwide company that has a local store here called Ham Radio Outlet. They have a lot of stuff there and have lots of info and suggestions and very competitive prices. They are actually cheaper than places like Amazon on almost everything. Ive dealt with a guy named Ron there who has been super helpful and answered all my stupid questions and recommended certain products. You can contact them by phone or email and pickup whatever it is you need curbside. If he isnt busy, you can pick his brain for a few minutes in front of the store. They also have some really cool places online to buy stuff that are small businesses as well. R&L electronics is another one I really like.
I highly suggest you do a little studying and get your license. I think it will drive you to explore more with it. I will try to update the thread with some more info as I go along in this journey and Im happy to answer any questions with my very limited knowledge base. And it would be awesome if any of the pros could comment or correct me this goes along.
First let me state that I am brand new to amateur radio. Ive owned a couple baofengs like millions of others, but didnt do much but turn them on and scanned a few times. I am in no way an expert and might even put up wrong info, but its from my experience only.
I just recently got my tech license and did about a month of studying for it. I used a couple apps and mainly just did it when I was on the shitter or sitting around bored. I also watched a handful of youtube videos.
First thing is that your equipment is absolutely crucial. Like most things in life, you get what you pay for. That goes for the actual radios to the antennas. There are 3 major gold standard manufacturers of radios. Kenwood, Yaesu, and Icom. They all are very similar but very different. They are the same in the fact that if all you use is basic analog communications, they will all serve you pretty much the same. The major difference between them is if you decide to use the digital communications parts. They all have their own different properties and procedures. Being that Im so new, Im concentrating on the analog portion so the digital isnt relevant to me just yet. Everything outside of those brands are either clones (which isnt necessarily a bad thing) or they are pretty much garbage. Baofengs are garbage. They are barely a step up from using a gmrs walmart walkie talkie. I almost want to throw the 2 I have away because they are so bad compared to the nicer ones. The nicer radios will be more user friendly, have more capabilities, more info on them when using the net to learn, hold way more channels, scan faster, and just plain work better. If I could compare it to something gun related, I would compare a baofeng to an M&P 15-22 and an actual AR15 or M16. Sure they are very similar, but they are very different at the same time. You wouldnt want to go into a battle with the 15-22 when you could have an AR for just a little bit more.
Antennas make a hug difference. Ive tried factory, to a couple different amazon ones, to actual good proven antennas. Diamond being the main one. Comet also makes a good handheld antenna. Supposedly Nagoya is a decent one, but I bought a Nagoya clone on accident from Amazon thinking it was a real one and it was dog crap. I tried multiple different kinds on my Yaesu and the Diamond and Comet were by far the best. There wasnt even a comparison in my experience. Amazon even sells these weird folding ones that are really long and then fold up to a smaller package but I saw reviews where they cut them open and found nothing but a tape measure inside. It seems to be one of the favorites that the "preppers" use but its really not a good antenna.
Ham exam tech license info. The test is basically a memorization test. If youre familiar with car electricity (12v), you will already be one step ahead. This stuff basically works off of DC. The best thing that helped me wasnt the ham radio license manual that I bought, it was an app called Ham Study and a website called hamexam.org. Both of them are free. Pull them up and memorize the questions and answers. Some of it you wont understand, but you can still memorize it and get your license so you can get more hands on to learn. The book is great for looking up stuff but wasnt much help for me in learning the info. The app has questions and if you dont know it or get it wrong, you can click a button that will give you the answer, explain it, and then sometimes give you a good way to memorize it.
For people that are really tech savvy with current stuff, you will find this entire system very antiquated. Which is good and bad. But sometimes it will be very frustrating at times. Especially at times like when using a computer to program your radio. The software and procedures are not friendly and they seem to take multiple unnecessary steps. It can get frustrating very quickly. I have chirp, RT systems, and the manufacturers version. All of them work almost the same and both are way more difficult than they should be. If you need to connect your radio to computer for programming, sometimes the drivers work and sometimes they dont. When using a cable, sometimes the cables work and sometimes they dont. Some are made for only upgrading firmware and not programming and some work for both. This is the most frustrating part to me. Its very time consuming just to get something to work correctly.
Here are a couple more things that helped me understand the basic idea of how it works.
- Power and antennas are crucial. The higher and better the antenna and the more power, the further you can transmit without a repeater (simplex-radio to radio).
- You can really only transmit about a mile or two with a handheld.
- Repeaters are like cell phone towers in that they will gather the signal all around it. So if you have a handheld, your radio is not transmitting all the way to the repeater as the repeater is actually grabbing your signal and bringing it back and then sending it out again with more power. When people run higher powered radios with those bigger antennas that you see in backyards, you can transmit much further and receive from further away.
- Without repeaters, the "prepper" idea of using radios is almost worthless. You might as well buy some walkie talkies.
- Its a lot harder to build a decent personal repeater than most people think.
- Different times of the year affect different frequencies.
- Sometimes its hard to get someone to help you with things and that is especially noticeable when not actually licensed. Lots of people will give you a surface answer, but wont explain the whys. Once you get your license, its like youre in the cool guy club and the answers are more elaborate.
- If setup, you can use different radios for different setups. Like using a handheld in a vehicle and connecting a rooftop antenna to it.
- You can actually send pictures and text messages using some of the radios, although Im not even close to that yet.
- There are probably somewhere over 300 different repeaters in Arizona alone. And there are ways to connect them and bounce from one repeater to another. So you can talk to someone from Phoenix all the way to Flagstaff or even further using them. I even heard a couple people talking that said they were in New Mexico and Tucson the other night.
- Check the website for the Queen Creek ARC and they have a calendar of "nets" where groups of people get together and chit chat. It will tell you what frequency to listen to so you can hear them.
There are lots of places where you can get your license and lots of times its cheap or even free. I got mine through the Thunderbird ARC and they were really awesome. Its in the NW valley and very organized and efficient. Everything was free there, but I joined the club to give a little. They use that money to do things like maintain and upgrade the repeaters that everyone uses, so its money well spent. Those things run into the thousands of dollars, so helping a little is appreciated.
Try to buy local. We have a nationwide company that has a local store here called Ham Radio Outlet. They have a lot of stuff there and have lots of info and suggestions and very competitive prices. They are actually cheaper than places like Amazon on almost everything. Ive dealt with a guy named Ron there who has been super helpful and answered all my stupid questions and recommended certain products. You can contact them by phone or email and pickup whatever it is you need curbside. If he isnt busy, you can pick his brain for a few minutes in front of the store. They also have some really cool places online to buy stuff that are small businesses as well. R&L electronics is another one I really like.
I highly suggest you do a little studying and get your license. I think it will drive you to explore more with it. I will try to update the thread with some more info as I go along in this journey and Im happy to answer any questions with my very limited knowledge base. And it would be awesome if any of the pros could comment or correct me this goes along.
