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They're not vague, everyone who can read can understand them, but people who can't pass a simple exam, that 10yo kids regularly pass, tend to misinterpret them. No, it's not a "sad ham" position, it's debunking a myth of ham radios being "emergency radios". If you go hiking into some remote area (no cell signal), and you listen to advice like yours, you buy a baofeng. Should you get licenced? Why? That dude on HN says the possible fine doesn't matter. And then you slip, fall down a ditch and break your leg. You take out your radio from the bag and do what exactly? The preprogrammed channels are useless [0], you scream for help, no one hears you. Did you manage to google emergency frequencies? Probably not. But hey, maybe you did! The first google result is 121.500MHz... AM, FM, who knows what that is, you scream for help, and still nothing. What then? You die. There are no emergency frequencies. No one is listening. No one is inside simplex range. You didn't get licenced and didn't test the equipment in advance and you don't know that.. you trusted that guy on HN, and now you're dead with a chinese piece of plastic that's useless. You're in the middle of nowhere and dying. Some people get licenced, they take their radios into a park and try to do a pota activation, figure out no one hears them at all, and know that their radio is useless in those situations. Preppers watching youtubers and people listening to you don't. Now, if you listened to a "sad ham", you would've bought a satellite messenger (if your phone doesn't support that already), something like a garmin inreach, you'd send an sos message, with your location, via a satellite to a person paid to read it and contact the proper authorities. You'd get saved. But nope, you bought a baofeng because of that prepper dude on youtube and that "sad-ham caller" on HN. Youtubers earn percentages of every sold baofeng, they'll shill them as best radios ever, then they'll try to sell your "survival cards" as the best thing ever too [1], it's all you need in an emergency! [0] https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/CCR_Default_Freque... [1] https://www.sosproducts.com/11-in-1-survival-credit-card-mul... |
For the record, I don’t think it’s a good idea to go hiking with a radio that you don’t know how to use. Having extra radios that you can pass out to family and neighbors in an emergency (assuming you can quickly teach them the basics) is a good thing.