[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.