Buying a Radio – What I Wish I’d Known

I was very lucky… My best friend (Fred, KE7JBA) is my Elmer. Fred had already researched and purchased a hand-held radio, so I just went with whatever he said. And I’m glad I did!

When buying your first radio, you really need to start by thinking about what you’re going to do with it:

• Hand-held, local, emergency and public service: some hams are really into helping in the community, and boy are hams useful in the local community! My club (DCARC, Davis County Amateur Radio Club) is active pretty much year-round. Every July we assist with the Independence Day parade. This October we’re assisting the Centerville City with their disaster drill. Also in October, we’re helping with the Davis Cup (battle of the high school bands) during which 35 different high school bands will shuttle through Davis High. We provide logistical support for all of this. I’m also volunteering next year with TERT (Timpanogos Emergency Response Team), providing rescue and other services to hikers on Mt. Timpanogos. All TERT communications is done on amateur bands (2 meter, to be precise). For this kind of service, a hand-held amateur radio is critical—also known as a handie-talkie or HT.
• Long and distance voice and community support, non-mobile: if you’re interested in helping with various logistics but don’t have an HT, you can still help out. You need a good station with headphones and a microphone. You’ll also need an antenna, tuner, and reliable power source. Many parades end up setting up with a stationary base station, coordinating the efforts of mobile volunteers. With the right equipment (antenna, tuner, and amplifier) you can make voice contacts in other states as well as overseas, too. It gets pretty interesting!
• Long distance morse: finally, you can use your base station to broadcast morse code signal (CW, or continuous wave) to make really long distance contacts—like half-way around the earth.

I bought my radio (Yeasu VX-7R) based on Fred’s recommendation. I needed a radio for backcountry communications because I was taking a group of scouts on a long hike through Utah’s Uinta mountains and I wanted a reliable source of communications in the event of an emergency. I’m glad I picked the hand-held – I have learned that I can make contacts locally as well as world-wide, using a series of repeaters and IRLP frequencies. So I get the best of both worlds – the portability and availability of an HT, with the long-distance communications of a powerful base station. I’ll be the first to admit the HT is average at everything – average distance, average broadcasting ability, etc. Unlike my friend Bob (N7XJ), I won’t ever contact Japan from a high mountain peak in Utah, but so far I have made contacts from Rocky Sea Pass, Lewiston Peak, and Mt. Timpanogos.

So the first step in buying a radio is to assess your ambitions. Based on that, make your radio selection. Frankly what I’m learning is that it really doesn’t matter what you buy as your first radio; you’ll probably buy a radio in another ‘category’ soon enough. That having been said, the nice points of an HT are that they are self-contained (you don’t need to buy a radio, tuner, amplifier, headphones, microphone and antenna) and you get a great taste of the flavor of amateur radio, with less investment – both in terms of time as well as money.

My purchase included the VX-7R (and I’ll review that in a later article), a AA-battery adapter for emergency power, and a Diamond quad-band antenna because the stock antenna (called a rubber duckie) just doesn’t have the broadcast range I needed. To prepare for my exam, I bought a copy of the Technician class test bank for my iPhone – it was invaluable!

Upcoming purchases (very soon) include a second rechargeable battery and a microphone, for my local event and disaster support. Down the road, I’m sure I’ll be building a true base station with an antenna tuner, amplifier, and all the bells and whistles.

In addition to commercial purchases, I’ve been planning to build two hand-held ‘backcountry’ antennas. My friend Bob (N7XJ) has been helping—he’s a very experienced backcountry transmitter, with CW contacts all over the world from the peaks of various Utah mountains. Over the winter, I plan to build a quad and a Yagi antenna for 2m voice transmission.

• HT or Handie-Talkie: portable batter-powered radio capable of transmission and reception on amateur bands. Most often used in conjunction with a repeater.
• Repeater: a signal broadcaster – you connect to it with your low-power radio on one frequency, and it re-broadcasts your transmission on another frequency at a much higher power.
• IRLP: Internet Radio Linking Project is an effort to link amateur radio systems via the Internet. On my local IRLP repeater, I am connecting to the Western Reflector, and have personally heard enthusiasts from all over the United States (Texas, Arkansas, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, New Jersey and Delaware come to mind) as well as from Germany, England, and New Zealand.
• CW: Continuous Wave or Morse code. This is communication in the form of short and long tones. Because this is ‘binary’ communication (on or off) the signal holds up over long distances and despite interference. It’s easy to make a CW connection around the world – you just need to understand the language.
• Quad: an antenna with four elements—the first two elements are ‘driven’ or powered – these carry the signal transmission. The others are reflectors. When the driven and reflector elements are sized correctly, they form constructive interference and boost the power of a signal.
• Yagi: a form of antenna similar to the quad. I have a recipe for a backcountry Yagi made of tape measures and PVC pipe. It ain’t pretty, but it’ll be light.