Advice needed

Hi I’m looking at doing a foundation course, hopefully 7th June?

What I’m after is some advice on an Hands held device, just seems a mind field. Might be me?
Don’t want to spend a fortune, as probably will upgrade as I progress. Just need something to get me started.

What would you nice people recommend?

Thanks
Geoff

Hi Geoff,

a great starter radio would be a Baofeng UV-5R. Reason being, they are a very inexpensive radio and also programming it isn't too bad neither with software (free and online) called 'Chirp'.

Later on you can venture into more expensive sets but i'd recommend a Baofeng UV-5R or similar to start with.

Good luck with your foundation,
73'
Mike (M7MMC)

Hello Geoff,

I agree with Mike the UV-5R for the money is unbeatable value, at that price though some compromises in quality are inevitable.

Here's my thoughts. VHF & UHF handhelds are fine if you have an active repeater in your area or an active bunch of simplex users. In my area there isn't so my Handy sits on my desk gathering dust most of the time.

My interest in the hobby is HF and I spend the majority of my radio time on 20 & 40 meters that despite conditions being poor at the moment still offer very good DX possibilities.

You can monitor the HF bands on your PC on the Hack green SDR website here's a link.

http://hackgreensdr.org:8901/

On my PC I have to use Microsoft Explorer because it wont work with Chrome.

Unfortunately Geoff Ham radio isn't a cheap hobby and decent kit can run into thousands of pounds. You can pick up used kit and entry level kit for much less though.

I would do your course and get more of a feel for what you might like to achieve from the hobby before you reach for the credit card.

Good luck with your studies do let us know how it goes.

73's Gary.

Cheers Mark
What would you recommend for an antenna?
Geoff

Or if want to spend a bit more  up market which better reciever and far easier to program and use is a yaesu ft4xe  around £60  get you on 2m and 70cm

All the best

Matt CTX Admin

Cheers Matt

DO NOT BUY A BAOFENG. They are utterly horrendous to use for a newbie as the ergonomics have literally no thought put into them making any task overly complicated, the front ends of the receivers get easily overloaded by out of band signals so they get lots of interference when in town, and they've got quite a few spurious signals on transmit.

Yaesu have brought out cheap handhelds for about £60 which perform better than Baofengs and are much easier to use.

Yaesu FT-25E is a 2m only handheld for £59.95.
Yaesu FT-4XE is a dual band handheld for £64.95
Yaesu FT-65E is a dual band handheld for £79.95 (has extra 4 programmable buttons and up/down buttons on front compared to FT-4XE)

All are infinitely better than a Baofeng or Wouxun.

I had only 2 cheap Chinese type rigs and far prefer yaesus, have tried icoms also but keep coming back to the yaesu name. Easy to use and program . You cant go far wrong .

yaesu-ft-4x-review-it-is-after-all-a-baofeng

Victor wrote:

yaesu-ft-4x-review-it-is-after-all-a-baofeng

Except it isn't at all and nowhere in that article does it say how or why they claim it is.