Cheap Amateur Ham Radios For A TIGHT Budget and Beginners!

This is gonna be a learning curve... Boy, am I glad all you people are here! Thanks

Viewing this video, I sometimes wonder why everybody buys "off the shelf" and pays big money for something they can make themselves (antennas mostly, but shack equipment from kits will be much cheaper and sometimes better quality and building from a kit will TEACH you stuff). Building your own antennas will teach you a lot about antennas and radio propagation. I also recommend building shack accessories from kits. That way, if the magic smoke comes out of it, you have the means to FIX it yourself. Dipole antennas are an inexpensive and completely homebrewed way to effectively get on the air. Doing things like Amateurs did 40 years ago when they had no "buy off the shelf" opportunities WILL save you big money!

#teamreplay Tons of good recommendations on the video. I know a lot of folks go with an HT as their first radio, my first radio was an HT, but I quickly upgraded to a mobile radio. With how cheap you can get into a used Japanese mobile radio or new Chinese mobile radio, along with J-pole or a mag mount VHF/UHF antenna stuck to a baking sheet you are much better off. Love the videos as always, 73!

Very helpful, getting my Tech class in July and General possibly in August and stating to think about gear to get!

I personally had the kguvd1p and that was an every day use radio. I used to used it on breaks when I worked at the Dayton airport. The ft60 is a great one too, very good battery life, easy to use and durable. Unless you want/need c4fm get the ft60 instead. The ft1900 was my first, but I would give a nod to the yaesu ft2750, the ic2300 is another great 2meter rig.

Missed the live stream. Trying to find my first HF setup now. Problem is I need mobile and go-box setups Would like to QRP with the mobile setup. Will be looking into your online options for testing, or testing with local club in June for General. Thanks for doing what you do. Great content. You and HR2.0 are my go-to's. Expanding to other channels you guys work with as well. Love the collaboration of youtubers! Keep up the great work! KT4RJN

Man, your videos are very helpful. Thanks!

Josh, Im not usually good with names myself, but I don't think being good at call signs is a thing. Maybe it's a passive indicator of a balanced and healthy life that you have trouble recalling people by your call sign. Thanks so much for having the YT channel, I would be rudderless and adrift in Ham hell without it.

The best memes on the intertubes!

Great show Josh. I've backordered the Wouxun KG-UV9P"X" from BSR but received my first HT, the Anytone AT-D878UVII Plus and a hotspot. I just bought the cheap Baofeng UV-9R Plus HT just to keep in the car. Now looking at the Xeigu 6100 for HF but also like the 7100, not sure yet.. I'm only licenced for QRP for now and will run the CAHRtenna at home and out and about for now. I will get an amp later and/or the 7300 for QTH, maybe with the DX Commander. Not sure what direction I'll be going but too many aspects of ham radio including FT8, WSPR and POTA. My health might not be good for SOTA. :/ Still early days, I have learnt so much in 3 months and your channel is great, very easy to watch, feel comfortable and accepted while learning so much.🍺👍🤓

Thanks for the info

I am very late to the party But .. hell .. finally someone considering all the people with a tight budget.. everywhere you look it is ICOM this... Kenwood that .. and all of this stuff cost an arm and leg.. so thank you for this

UK pricing-Icom IC 7100-£1000 Icom IC 7300-£1200 Xiegu G90-£400 Yaesu FT891 -£670 Yaesu FT818-£600

H Josh Owen G0RCL UK. I have a budget QYT KT-WP12 tiny mobile budget 2m and 70cm radio, I like very much, it is softtware driven and upgradable. The main feature is the display which is on the fist mic along with the speaker and controls to program it with, great feature if you are hard of hearing to just put it to your ear. It is very small but so handy to remove for security, plugs into the cig holder 12v and run about 20 watts. You probably know about this radio, but my take is yeah it's a super little to get you on the air radio.

Ham radio really is only as expensive as you want to make it to be. Low budget offerings; pixie 0.5w cw transceiver kit, less than $15 off built in a case on ebay. Less than $10 if you're willing to build the kit yourself. You can make an antenna for less than $15. Granted you'll need to learn morse, but it's a part of the hobby that tends to go unnoticed and overlooked by people. Plenty of activity and you can work the world. That's not to say CW is a cheap means to get into ham radio, for the same price as the kit and antenna, you could be jumping on 70cm/2m with a uv5r, working repeaters (and the gateways) and high points for activations. It's nice to have gear like an icom 7900, and that will be expensive, but it's not needed by any means. I always find it weird when people say to me, it's too expensive of an hobby to get into. When really they mean it's expensive time wise, because the hardware itself doesn't have to be. Then when people do throw down large amounts of cash getting into the hobby for expensive hardware, they still find it lackluster when they look at their iphone and aren't getting the results from the radio they expect (or rather want). If you go back even just 30 or 40 years, radio as we know it now was not the same. Building your own radio, learning as you go at the club so you could get on air was just the way things was done. Just because we can spend insane amounts of money on different radios, antennas, paddles etc doesn't mean we have to, it's just easier.

If you are going to take a technician test, at least read through the general pool and take that one too as it doesn't cost anything in the same test session. After two weeks of studying I was going in for my test on Saturday. On Friday I found out that if I pass I can take the General test also for free. I read the question pool once before leaving to take my test and was easily able to pass it. Tech and General area SO close it is easy to pass one if you passed the other. Just need to know W=VA and the variants, and 300,000,000 m/s so you can easily calculate frequencies by band and the rest is just common sense if you've already studied for tech. (Thought I'd post this after I saw the superchat where the guys wife passed her tech test.)

I recently purchased a Baofeng BF-F8HP and the Nagoya NA-771 antenna. Other options, too. For $68 alone, a great 8-watt radio. BTW - The Mirkit programming cable WILL work with Windows 10 if you download a driver. I believe BaofengTech offers such.

Love that you’ve got a Change My Mind meme

My first radio was a Yaesu FT-2900... 75 watt VHF only... great radio for the shack or mobile... my first HF was the Icom IC-7100. I bought it not knowing exactly what I wanted to do with HF but knew it would do anything I wanted to do. The original plan was to own it a year and then move it to my “Adventure Machine” then get my dream radio a Yaesu FTDX101MP. But Yaesu came out with the FTDX10 and saved me a lot of money... 18 months in the hobby and I haven’t bought an antenna... unless you count my ham sticks for my home brewed octopus. Building is my favorite part of the hobby. @Ham Radio Crash Course, can you do a video on QRP Multi Band SSB kit transceivers? I ordered a QRP Labs QCX Mini for 40, but I found I’m mostly interested in voice DX. I don’t work digital or CW modes very often.

"It's... a wind chime.."😂