great hand held radio for the money

[BurbanAZ]

I just passed my tech and ordered one of these till I can get a better setup for my 4Runner. Seems like a good thing to start with since people say they work well and they are affordable.

 

[RubiconGeoff]

I genuinely mean no offense here. But to me the left turn this thread has taken is inappropriate. It's as if someone were to post about their new SUV, all happy and proud about it, and someone were to complain that all of these things are contributing to the destruction of our planet with the really bad gas mileage. Or to start questioning if driving it off-road is legal in all places.

I also don't like the implication that cheaper radios = lower barrier to entry = poorer people = worse behavior...because I really don't believe it's accurate. Yes, cb has some bad characters, and cb radios are inexpensive. But 75m is no brain trust. Way worse behavior, from people with a serious investment in equipment, compared to 2m/440 around here. Maybe it's true that people with more disposable income are more responsible, but I'm not so sure...and am sure that it's a social/political discussion, not one about communications.

For those of us who oftentimes need radios in harsh environments, it's nice to have some cheap, disposable, but still halfway-decent ham radios on the market now. But there are also some downsides to the availability of this cheap equipment.

It may be politically incorrect to acknowledge it, but the FCC license and higher cost of entry are absolutely responsible for preventing ham radio bands from being drug down into the mud by the same people who've ruined 11-meter. The FCC doesn't enforce CB rules because they're leaving that band as a "honey pot" for a certain class of users, and they're smart enough to know that as long as we all collectively allow a tiny sliver of the 11-meter band to be abused, other bands will be saved from a similar "Wild West" mentality. You'd better believe that the FCC (and especially the licensed amateur radio users) will enforce the rules and regulations of ham bands to keep out the riff-raff.

 

[tgreening]

I never said anything about the economic status of the people involved, only their willingness to spend money. A person can be rolling in cash and unwilling to spend $10 on something they feel not worth it. On the flipside is the person with a low income job that still manages to find a way to shell out the money for a set of 24" chrome wheelies for his rust bucket.

The brand of radio itself is not the issue. I'm not a Baofeng hater by any stretch, although I cant say they look like much in the quality dept. I do own a few Wouxun handhelds and I'm relatively happy with them for their purpose.

I'm sure there are plenty of responsible people who will get into ham radio because the price of entry has dropped to the point they're willing to ante up. I'm also sure there are a lot who will be on the air because they like the features of ham, its now cheap enough to buy in, yet also see no real reason why they should be bothered to study, take the test, and get a license. There are plenty of threads here where that mindset is apparent, as well as the opinion that hams are a bunch of elitist Richard Craniums.

No offense intended at all to the OP, but I got the impression from his post he was unfamiliar with the rules /regulations of ham, but was more excited about all the features ham has to offer, in a cheap little radio.

 

[Kiddmen57]

Almost everyone I know that got into Ham started with a cheap little Baofeng because the initial investment was minimal. All of them have their license, but would probably never have considered Ham had they had to fork out $500-1000 to get started. I think it's a great option for people new to Ham! It's also going to be my entry into Ham.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Spot on! Was introduced on a lead run with one of these little guys and bought one right away to listen to local repeaters. Passed my tech and eventually bought a dual band mobile. So yeah, these are really good to get new HAMs starting out into it.

I will say this, I recently joined a Baofeng group on Facebook, you think the derailment of threads here is bad, the guys on the FB group are just plain old ******************.