[twothamendment]

Interesting read, but it almost paints anyone who owns a Baofeng as a terrorist. It does do a great job of showing how lame it is to think that those radios will help in a standoff like that. If the government was going to go in, you can bet the first thing they'd do is jam those cheap radios.

For anyone interested in ham radio, there isn't a better place to start. Without these cheap, not-as-good-as-something-that-costs-10x-as much radios you can get into the hobby for under $50 including your license. I'd spend a tad bit more and go for the UV-82hp and a new antenna, but $75 to get going isn't bad. Without these I don't think there would be many younger people getting started. In my area there is a very active repeater of normal people (many of them software guys, so maybe not all that normal) chatting about all kinds of topics and there is always someone to answer a question.

Passing the test isn't bad - checkout the mobile friendly http://www.hamstudy.org (no, affiliated, just a happy user).

[Aloha]

In my opinion the Baofeng isn't a very good radio (poor build quality, poor performing RF deck, bad documentation and software support), and there are better inexpensive options out there - most surplus commercial radio gear is around the same price with a better build quality - and for those with some money to spend, you can pick up surplus XTS3000 with DES-XL (or DES-OFB) for under 250 bucks ea, add another 3-800 for a KVL and you have a somewhat hard to crack Digital (P25) encrypted radio system.

The Motorola iDEN handset DirecTalk feature is also a great option for comms up to about a mile, no encryption, so its more of a security thru obscurity system (same with the Motorola DTR series of radios, which are conceptually identical to the iDEN handset feature - down to power output even - I think the difference is message format and codec IMBE vs VSLEP or AMBE), because of the nature of the beast unless you know its DirecTalk, its unlikely you would be able to figure out and find it either.

I've long used surplus Motorola or Kenwood gear in my car and for handhelds - GP300's, XTS's, Spectra (for the car) and before that a Syntor X (which had one of the hottest receivers I've ever seen in a mobile) - I myself have been licensed since 1996.

[hatsunearu]

>In my opinion the Baofeng isn't a very good radio

oh yes, it's quite terrible. I helped my friend pick up a mobile radio from HRO and made him hit our repeater, but I couldn't pick up the transmission from the repeater for some reason. as you know, the TX frequency of the repeater is 0.6MHz away from the RX frequency. It turns out my crappy baofeng was being overloaded by the 5W transmit power my friend was blasting.

[cdjk]

I've tried using commercial radios before, but the biggest annoyance is the difficulty in either 1) getting programming software and 2) actually using the software, which usually has an atrocious UI.

At least with a purpose-built ham radio you can enter frequencies directly on the handset, even if it's a pain. Although the programming software for them is almost as bad.

[twothamendment]

I heard bad things about programming the Baofeng and other cheap radios so picked one up before getting blessed by the FCC to operate it. I figured if it was a pain I didn't care about passing some test.

It was a pretty straight forward process. I bought a decent cable to plug it in to my laptop, downloaded CHIRP (http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home) and used it to pull in a list of local repeaters, selected the ones I wanted and dumped the list to the radio.

There was one issue of confusion, maybe this will help someone. The order is important. I've never failed if I: 0) Remove the antenna 1) Plug in the cable to the computer 2) Plug in the cable to the radio 3) Turn the radio on - all the way, full volume Then CHIRP will happily download or upload profiles from the radio.

The UV-82 manual is decent. I'm guessing it is the older models that people talk about. There are some funny translations here and there, but I don't recall anything that didn't work or make sense. Programming them by hand is still no fun. Thank you everyone who works on CHIRP!

[beezle]

"most surplus commercial radio gear is around the same price with a better build quality"

As someone considering getting into this, can you make a couple of suggestions of surplus commercial gear in this price range (ie, under $75)? TIA

[Aloha]

What band do you want (VHF, UHF, etc)?

Do you need a radio that can be legally transmit on MURS or Part 90 frequencies (land mobile) or just ham radio?

Do you want a handheld or mobile?

Do you object to hardware that uses DOS (preferably running either on a real older laptop/desktop, or perhaps slowed down in DOSBox to program) or needs funky interface cables?

Do you object to something that must be programmed with a computer, and cannot be programmed by front panel inputs?

[beezle]

- 2m/70cm seems best to start (?) - Not business oriented, just ham. - mobile or handheld, though mobile in the sense of base station, not for in truck use. - no serious objection to odd cables or dos as long as parts/software is not so obscure as to be frustrating to find or use - would like to retain front panel option

Thanks again

[Aloha]

If you just want a straight ham radio, I'd recommend a Yeasu FT-60R (~100 on ebay), having owned one, I find the build quality much better, I suspect it also performs better when it comes to adjacent channel interference, intermod, and desense too - for a mobile, a Kenwood TM-281A (~120 on ebay) - which is a 2m only radio, but one of the best (and easiest) I've used.

For Commercial options (you generally loose the front panel programability) so long as you only need the ham bands - Motorola HT1000 (~20 on ebay) (available in VHF and UHF) or for a mobile (could be used as a base or in a truck) a Motorola Spectra (~40-150 on ebay) or GM300 (~50-100 on ebay) - as a note, when buying the commercial radios on ebay, you have to pay careful attention to the bandsplit of UHF radios, many of them are 450-482, rather than the 403-450 we'd want for ham radio.

The thing is, as a radio, the Chinese units are not horrible, they're a world away better than what anyone was using 25 years ago - but they're essentially disposable radios, one drop - and you're probably buying a new one - to give you an example, I own a portion radio fleet that a group of us use for low cost rentals to non-profits, its mostly Motorola, but the Motorola hardware is expensive, so we were looking for a low cost analog only option, and we bought 10 woxun handhelds for our rental fleet, they made it three rental cycles (about 18 months) before all but 2 were dead - in that same period, we had no failures in the Motorola and Kenwood portions of our fleet.

These experiences perhaps color my judgement a bit about the baofengs, woxuns and the like.

[morsch]

I'm not involved in any armed popular uprising, but I do sometimes go on mountain hikes, would these fit the bill there? Like when the group separates and you try to stay in contact over a few kilometers (no line-of-sight). We had some cheap radios along a few years ago, no idea what kind of technology, but the reception was useless.

[sliverstorm]

Everyone needs to be ham licensed, and you would probably want to identify a mountain repeater you could use. Given those two things, sure!

[morsch]

It's not entirely clear to me that such radios require a ham license (see discussion below). I'm not in the US, anyway, so it doesn't really matter to me. But since I have no idea what a mountain repeater is, these kinds of radios might not be suitable to novices.

[steauengeglase]

Not to mention it is a very popular line with volunteer fire depts and rescue squads. Mostly because they can hand them out cheaply and no one cares if the equipment is damaged.