expiredthespecial posted Jul 07, 2021 01:51 PM
Item 1 of 5
Item 1 of 5
expiredthespecial posted Jul 07, 2021 01:51 PM
UV-5R Ham Radio Handheld High Power Two Way Radio with Driver Free Programming Cable and 3800mAh Battery Includes Full Kit Walkie Talkie (2Pack) $62.22
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Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank TunaNugget
I don't know about the thumbs down, except that a lot of ham operators don't care for this radio. It's partly snobbery, and partly that the output is really sloppy. Or at least used to be, I haven't kept up.
I don't know about the thumbs down, except that a lot of ham operators don't care for this radio. It's partly snobbery, and partly that the output is really sloppy. Or at least used to be, I haven't kept up.
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not sure if you need a tall antenna and all that or. can use like a walkie talkie.
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank TunaNugget
not sure if you need a tall antenna and all that or. can use like a walkie talkie.
I got 100% on the technicians so they let me take the general for free, which I of course failed because
I hadn't studied for that. Not super hard, but not easy-peasey either.
Edit: I didn't mean that the General and Extra were drop-dead easy. But the technician is, and it's all you need to use this radio.
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Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank mrstangblb
Ham radio has been pretty fun for me since I got some of my Great Uncle's equipment when he was going into a nursing home. With a General license I have talked to people on the other side of the world with a fairly inexpensive (around $60) antenna and a more powerful base station ham radio, like an older Kenwood or Icom that you can find probably on Craigslist.
These walkie talkies are good to hit local repeaters with, and from my house I can hit a repeater that's about 50 miles away. Repeaters multiply and disperse your signal over a larger area, so from South Carolina I can easily talk to someone in North Carolina on the repeater. Line of sight with these walkie talkies can be a few miles, but it's much easier and more fun to use the repeaters.
You can also program these walkie talkies to listen to fire and police frequencies to make them into a scanner, and you can find a lot of that frequency information at RadioReference.com [radioreference.com]. The Space Station can also be reached (more likely with a modified antenna for these walkie talkies), but I've never tried talking to them.
There are a lot of old school hams on these and the HF frequencies, so a lot of the conversations center on radios and equipment, but there are also lots of people like me that just like to see who is on to talk. I was very interested in ham radio when I was young but had no money to get into it, and with the power of the Internet overshadowing, ham radio isn't as attractive to people. To me it's still fun to fire up my HF radio and talk to someone in Calgary, Belarus or Italy depending on the conditions. Digital modes with other equipment are pretty cool, too - I know very little about Morse Code because the tests don't require it, but with computer software you can easily converse by decoding the signals and sending your own conversation.
With worst case disaster scenarios, though, ham radio will be available when phones and cell phones will not be.
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