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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.
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank Sirradiodude
Many clone brands promise same or better features and performance but actual performance is lacking. These type of sellers also INTENTIONALLY attempt to deceive buyers by masking these are not actually BaoFeng with exact same model numbers and pics obscuring the clone brand name.
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.
If one can't pass, I suggest 2 cups with string
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank danath256
Not really, I used
https://hamstudy.org/
I have some electronics background so that part was easy for me. studied for about 3 weeks and then took the test.
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https://hamstudy.org/
I have some electronics background so that part was easy for me. studied for about 3 weeks and then took the test.
Studied for 3 weeks? Oh man
"Tidradio" brand with 168 item reviews
No name seller
vitahui
Business Name: Guangzhou WeiTuanHui E-commerce limited
1188 lifetime feedback (low)
only 177 in the last year. this is a tiny barely used seller account.
ymmv, seems sketch. you'll get what you pay for (at best)
The first level is called a technicians license. You take a short test and the question bank is freely available online. Most tests cost $10 or $20. There's a couple clubs that offer them for free.
https://hamstudy.org/
I have some electronics background so that part was easy for me. studied for about 3 weeks and then took the test.
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Too many political overwhelmed the deal thread...