I did that in 1976. Over the last couple years, I've been acquiring a variety of antennas that can be rapidly deployed in the field. All of the radios will run off 13.8 VDC battery or power supplies. Radios are all voice/data capable. I also acquired better test instruments including cross needle power/SWR meters, vector network analyzers and antenna analyzers good from 0 to 500 MHz. Some of the equipment is leveraging DSP for data comm that runs on laptop PCs. The HF rigs use SDR and can handle a full range of modulation types AM/FM/USB/LSB/FSK/PSK.
You can find training materials on arrl.org. The two big equipment shops are Ham Radio Outlet and Gigaparts. Accessories are well covered by MFJ. Check Chameleon Antenna and DX Engineering for antenna/feedline supplies. Amazon has access to multiple suppliers as well.
+1
I too have boundless toroids and magnetic wire for making transformers, et al. but For your fellow Freeper, using the ham study test apps for iOS or android is the simpliest way these days. Later he can get geeky like the rest of us and have a collection of “stuff”
I might also recommend in the very short term to pay the $35 for an FCC GMRS License. (NO TEST!) Your area may have a vibrant GMRS community for emergency communications. I have friends that are both licensed Amateur and GMRS. SOme are sgtarting to play around with ALLSTAR Link nodes for GMRS. How cool is that?
I am a recently licensed amateur (2018) and currently a General. At my age, that’s pretty much good enough to DX around the world and enjoy everything I want to enjoy.
These days I am taking to making mini baluns/ununs for portable work with my Xiegu G90. 20w chinese rig that has a killer antenna tuner built in. suddenly realized I have five acres to play around on portable, so I don’t have to go anywhere—so I have my shack inside and now my outside shack!
73 N6(XXX)
Oh and one additional antenna....its a variation of the Rybokov. measure out 17 foot six inches of cheap speaker wire. Then measure out say four lines of 15 foot wire as your radials. Get a 4:1 Balun or Unun, (Both work) Attache the antenna line and the radials to the transformer.
The antenna line taped going up one of those telescoping squib poles of appropriate length. It will tune on 20, 17, 15, 10 and yes, even 12m. One can talk around the world on that set up....the design is from K4OGO. He calls it the 17-5.
#40 fl8r