Hey FRiend,
It’s about $1400 with tax, but the very best thing there is that checks all your boxes is the IC-705.
It has it’s own battery, and is about the size of a small brick. It’s very light by any standard of radio and it is an ‘all-band’ radio.
All you need to do is hook the right antenna to it and it does the rest no matter what band you are on.
It’s got a visual display that allows you to actually see where there is a radio transmission and it allows you to lock onto it.
It’s a TRANSceiver, meaning it receives and transmits.
You COULD get a scanner for cheaper, but when you get your licenses you’ll want to transmit too.
Also, if things go dark for a while, the FCC isn’t going to be going after non-license holders, per se.
If you are transmitting person to person on a frequency that is not a repeater, chances are nobody is going to say anything.
Illegal, yep, but so will a lot of things be illegal that frankly were legal, like being a conservative. Or being a white male Christian.
VHF/UHF radios are fine, but they are line-of-sight. The 705 can do it all.
I think the repeaters are going to be targeted pretty quickly. A lot of ham clubs are coming up with band plans.
You can come up with one for your family and friends - a band plan and a check-in comms plan (Look up the frequency for each day of the week and contact your family each day at the same time is a good, simple, band/frequency plan).
Simplex (press the button and talk, then take your finger off the button and listen) is easy to do. Locally you can do this with handheld radios (they are called handy talkies, or HTs).
A cheap one that you can also tune to Marine VHF is the Baofeng UV82-C. I bought them by the dozen for my Scout Troop and gave them to kids when they passed their Tech exam.
Yup, Chinese. Who cares at this point, and this is a radio, not a phone with a tracking chip.
Buy a five pack and you can give them to your family members.
I bought a piece of software that allows me to program a band plan in there, plus all the marine VHF channels so I can use them on boats (also not legal, but I don’t care).
About $50/copy out the door, or cheaper in packs of 5. They used to sell them in packs of 10 and 12, but apparently you can’t buy them that way anymore.
You can use the UHF bands to receive satellite, by the way. Building a satellite antenna is not hard, and it is interesting. There are a ton of ham radio satellites in the sky (the ham community has been very successful getting satellite payloads on just about every shuttle launch back in the day).
Thanks for the helpful input, I do appreciate it, but again "No Chinese nothing", for reasons that frankly should not require clarification.
What do you use for an antenna on your boat?
I’ve been thinking about buying a Marine SSB. But I don’t know if I should, or if I should just get a regular Shortwave. I probably won’t use it as a Ham unit unless its an emergency. I probable won’t get a license. Does a Shortwave radio cover the Marine frequency?
I’m on our boat full time.
Kinda spendy, but later, with the license, etc, that's helpful.
For now, listen/lurk only.
I have been looking at the BaoFeng UV-82HP.
What is the difference with the UV-82c?