Gear

About

We’ve shown that there are many ham-related activities that a person can enjoy without buying any new gear. But of course, buying or borrowing radio equipment dramatically expands what a ham or ham-to-be can do. There’s an old saying that if you ask two hams the same question about what gear to buy, they’ll give you three opinions, and you should ignore all of them. Ok, so that’s not much help.

In this short section, I’m going to give you a very opinionated take on how you should think about what gear to buy, not what specific bit of equipment to buy.

But before doing that, here are some general observations:

• There is no perfect (fill in the blank, i.e., radio, antenna, etc).
• Most hams who remain active in the hobby end up with more than one radio.
• Yes, older used equipment seems more expensive than it seems like it should be.