TOTALLY NEW TO COMMS AND NAV, NEED PURCHASE ADVISE

[OCD Overland]

Just get an InReach. When you need help, the "magic" of the ham radio will be of little comfort. Depending on a means of communication that you find complex and unfamiliar in an emergency when you might be injured and panicky is dumb. If you're the one who's hurt, will your kids know how to use it? Will they be able to use your GPS to give someone your location?

The InReach has a button. Push it and help comes.

 

[unusedusername]

Relying on a laptop to program your radio means you won't know how to switch to other frequencies manually if needed. At the very least, keep the manual or a set of programming instructions with the radio at all times.

I agree with everything you've said up to this point. Modern radios have thousands of memory slots. You can simple program in ALL the repeaters in the entire region. I've got the entire west coast in my ID-5100 (2500 in California, another 3k in NV, AZ and CO). My PL/offset lookup is in the radio itself, labeled with the town name and gps coordinates of the repeater site.

The only time I would likely need to use the VFO on a trail is to do simplex.

 

[LR Max]

There are loads of monitored repeaters in the southeast, program your radio with a laptop and just scan the channels to find them

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

Indeed.

I programmed both my Baofengs and my Icom handhelds. So I can flip through them easily without a laptop or anything.

Also the Icom ID-51 handheld has been pretty darn good, especially with an external antenna mounted on my vehicle.

Here is my thread:

http://forum.expeditionportal.com/threads/167179-SE-Ham-radio-repeater-List

List of repeaters in the southeast (primarily around GA and going from there) with activity. If guys are on there talking often, then when its silent, most likely someone is monitoring. I haven't updated it recently but then again I haven't traveled outside of GA with my ham recently either.