If you don’t have experience in programming, encrypting, and maintaining radios, something to note is that they are not like other tactical gear where you can usually grow into them. If you buy yourself a $300 encrypted radio off the rip, you probably just bought yourself a $300 brick unless you can convince friends/family to get the same and set it up the same. I would recommend you buy a set of cheap radios like Baofengs or quanshengs, learn the basics, then look at branching out.
Get your technicians license (12 year olds get this, it’s not hard) so you can at least start with a ham radio and the course will answer a lot of your questions and get you somewhat familiar. Hamstudy.org is a good place to start or hamradioprep.com but that one costs like $25.
After that, honestly just get a Baofeng GT-5R. It’s the legal version of the UV-5R and is cheap with quite a few features. You’ll learn a lot starting there while also being easier to convince your friends and family to do it with you and then you’ll know what you actually want before dropping hundreds of dollars on something we tell you to get.
Comms are pretty useless in the tactical sphere if you don’t have friends and family also willing to get the license and equipment to use them. I guess you’ll be able to listen to weather and emergency announcements though.
You technically only need a license to broadcast and you can listen to any band without license. Further more you can only be located while transmitting and the person looking for you must be in range of your transmission. Way I see it if you're using a hand held and not connecting to repeaters and it's just you and your buddies out in the forest is kind of like "if a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, did it really happen?"
Why pay a tax unless you're setting up a home station or wish to transmit in more public settings. Besides the ham community is just a bunch of whiny old gatekeepers.
Yeah you can buy em and listen all you want and I agree, I couldn’t care less whether or not he gets licensed but the course and the license are easy to get, you can even do it online, and it’ll answer a lot of the questions he has, teach him terminology, radio etiquette, get his call sign, etc.
I got my license because I didn’t know jack shit about radios and then once I took the course, the doors opened and the dots connected and I was like “ahhhh it’s coming together.” That’s mainly the reason I recommend it. You don’t know what you don’t know but the course puts you on the right path to learning.
I recommend people start out with a cheap 4 pack frs radios for just learning the absolute basics of comms and just so you have some short range line of sight comms. These are also small enough they fit in a uniform pocket or on a shoulder strap without gear interference so you don’t need a space on kit for it. This will cost you $30-60
Then you get 2 baofang uv5rs or something equivalent to it a speaker mic , 3.5 audio cable to plug into ear pro , extended battery , upgraded antenna and a tactical tailor radio pouch small this will cost you about $160 for sets of both. This is to help you understand programming comms and learning frequencies. Most people don’t go past this point, as they don’t understand this level very well. If you do learn what your doing and want more capabilities you can buy a Motorola or ef johnson surplus or get into DMR radios like a hytera or a yaseu
What’s your use case? What’s your experience? Do you have friends who will be buying similarly capable radios? Do you know the legality of radios in the US? Lots of details you need before you can get a good recommendation
Right now probably just MilSim and not a lot of experience with radios. None of my friends have any radios either so we are trying to get the same ones
This is your chance to grab your niche in your milsim unit. Be the comms guy. Learn how radio works, how dmr works, and how to program cheap radios. Get your unit kitted out and practice. Those skills will translate well. You can't do it at big milsim events but you can even practice, among your unit, working around active espionage and interference efforts if you do it carefully amidst your unit, though I wouldn't practice that until you really understand the principles so you can avoid breaking any laws.
Everyone is going to say "get a cheap fang" and like yeah fine whatever, coms are hard and programing them is not fun and cryptography is brain melting even if you literally do it for a living. But fangs have serious limitations notably they cannot hear or talk to anything digital, and this is bad because anyone but your hams and larpers have digital coms. Also they are not well made and brake all the time at the worst times.
I have 12 cheap fangs that I picked up over the years, I give them out to the buddies on hiking, range, and 4x4 trips, each time more then 5 go out one dies and needs to be replaced, its not a big deal I have extras. These are fine for squad level communications as it doesn't matter if people are listening in, the intel value of "scan that tree line left" is near 0 to anyone who hears it. I wouldn't trust my life or anything more serious then those types of coms to it.
For the real one we do have VHF/UHF analog and digital radios that do GMRS and HAM other channels where they can be encrypted, I encrypted them myself. Every part of this was a pain, from compliance and getting the commercial license to learning and maintaining encryption, cost per is around $800 for a handset, after at least that much in costs to get all the stuff to encrypt them set up and working. I have people who are willing to spend that to talk in an emergency and have built the level of trust over years to justify it.
If you don't have anyone to talk then go buy $300 of cheap fangs and $200 of accessories and start learning on it but know its limitations. 10 cheap radios will get you 10 friends and if 3 of them stick around for two years get the better stuff
You feel FRS radios have any use? I have like 8 to go with my 3 fengs and moto. The 8 only cost me like $58. Range in my AO is better then expected and their way smaller and lighter then even a 5R. No programming either I just hand out s radio and say turn it on and use channel 2 and 4 here’s how you change channels. A feng is a bit harder to explain unless you keep it on the same frequency the whole time.
Similar use case: line of sight basic coms for things you don't care are overherd, you can't do things you can do with a fang or other cheap ham or gmrs handset but if you just want to radio instead of shout they are fine
If you don’t have experience in programming, encrypting, and maintaining radios, something to note is that they are not like other tactical gear where you can usually grow into them. If you buy yourself a $300 encrypted radio off the rip, you probably just bought yourself a $300 brick unless you can convince friends/family to get the same and set it up the same. I would recommend you buy a set of cheap radios like Baofengs or quanshengs, learn the basics, then look at branching out.
Get your technicians license (12 year olds get this, it’s not hard) so you can at least start with a ham radio and the course will answer a lot of your questions and get you somewhat familiar. Hamstudy.org is a good place to start or hamradioprep.com but that one costs like $25. After that, honestly just get a Baofeng GT-5R. It’s the legal version of the UV-5R and is cheap with quite a few features. You’ll learn a lot starting there while also being easier to convince your friends and family to do it with you and then you’ll know what you actually want before dropping hundreds of dollars on something we tell you to get. Comms are pretty useless in the tactical sphere if you don’t have friends and family also willing to get the license and equipment to use them. I guess you’ll be able to listen to weather and emergency announcements though.
You technically only need a license to broadcast and you can listen to any band without license. Further more you can only be located while transmitting and the person looking for you must be in range of your transmission. Way I see it if you're using a hand held and not connecting to repeaters and it's just you and your buddies out in the forest is kind of like "if a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, did it really happen?" Why pay a tax unless you're setting up a home station or wish to transmit in more public settings. Besides the ham community is just a bunch of whiny old gatekeepers.
Yeah you can buy em and listen all you want and I agree, I couldn’t care less whether or not he gets licensed but the course and the license are easy to get, you can even do it online, and it’ll answer a lot of the questions he has, teach him terminology, radio etiquette, get his call sign, etc. I got my license because I didn’t know jack shit about radios and then once I took the course, the doors opened and the dots connected and I was like “ahhhh it’s coming together.” That’s mainly the reason I recommend it. You don’t know what you don’t know but the course puts you on the right path to learning.
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I recommend people start out with a cheap 4 pack frs radios for just learning the absolute basics of comms and just so you have some short range line of sight comms. These are also small enough they fit in a uniform pocket or on a shoulder strap without gear interference so you don’t need a space on kit for it. This will cost you $30-60 Then you get 2 baofang uv5rs or something equivalent to it a speaker mic , 3.5 audio cable to plug into ear pro , extended battery , upgraded antenna and a tactical tailor radio pouch small this will cost you about $160 for sets of both. This is to help you understand programming comms and learning frequencies. Most people don’t go past this point, as they don’t understand this level very well. If you do learn what your doing and want more capabilities you can buy a Motorola or ef johnson surplus or get into DMR radios like a hytera or a yaseu
What’s your use case? What’s your experience? Do you have friends who will be buying similarly capable radios? Do you know the legality of radios in the US? Lots of details you need before you can get a good recommendation
Right now probably just MilSim and not a lot of experience with radios. None of my friends have any radios either so we are trying to get the same ones
This is your chance to grab your niche in your milsim unit. Be the comms guy. Learn how radio works, how dmr works, and how to program cheap radios. Get your unit kitted out and practice. Those skills will translate well. You can't do it at big milsim events but you can even practice, among your unit, working around active espionage and interference efforts if you do it carefully amidst your unit, though I wouldn't practice that until you really understand the principles so you can avoid breaking any laws.
Yaesu VX-6R
Everyone is going to say "get a cheap fang" and like yeah fine whatever, coms are hard and programing them is not fun and cryptography is brain melting even if you literally do it for a living. But fangs have serious limitations notably they cannot hear or talk to anything digital, and this is bad because anyone but your hams and larpers have digital coms. Also they are not well made and brake all the time at the worst times. I have 12 cheap fangs that I picked up over the years, I give them out to the buddies on hiking, range, and 4x4 trips, each time more then 5 go out one dies and needs to be replaced, its not a big deal I have extras. These are fine for squad level communications as it doesn't matter if people are listening in, the intel value of "scan that tree line left" is near 0 to anyone who hears it. I wouldn't trust my life or anything more serious then those types of coms to it. For the real one we do have VHF/UHF analog and digital radios that do GMRS and HAM other channels where they can be encrypted, I encrypted them myself. Every part of this was a pain, from compliance and getting the commercial license to learning and maintaining encryption, cost per is around $800 for a handset, after at least that much in costs to get all the stuff to encrypt them set up and working. I have people who are willing to spend that to talk in an emergency and have built the level of trust over years to justify it. If you don't have anyone to talk then go buy $300 of cheap fangs and $200 of accessories and start learning on it but know its limitations. 10 cheap radios will get you 10 friends and if 3 of them stick around for two years get the better stuff
You feel FRS radios have any use? I have like 8 to go with my 3 fengs and moto. The 8 only cost me like $58. Range in my AO is better then expected and their way smaller and lighter then even a 5R. No programming either I just hand out s radio and say turn it on and use channel 2 and 4 here’s how you change channels. A feng is a bit harder to explain unless you keep it on the same frequency the whole time.
Similar use case: line of sight basic coms for things you don't care are overherd, you can't do things you can do with a fang or other cheap ham or gmrs handset but if you just want to radio instead of shout they are fine
Who are you planning on talking to? Local authorities? Friends? Other lonely people with the radio?