◆ PARALLAX

I have been in ham radio seventeen years and I am going to say this bluntly because I see the same mistake over and over. Stop buying cheap imported handheld radios for your go-bag. Just stop.

They sell them at hamfests for forty bucks. They sound like a kazoo through a tin can, and half the time the antenna is worthless before you get them home. You think you are being frugal. You are putting junk in your go-bag and calling it a backup.

Here is what matters: the antenna is everything. The best radio in the world with a destroyed antenna is a paperweight. A mediocre radio with a good antenna is a tool. The cheap-import antennas are about as useful as a toothpick.

Get LICENSED -- study for the Technician class, take the test, get your call sign. You learn the craft instead of guessing. Then buy a real radio -- Icom, Yaesu, or Kenwood, something with real support. Then LEARN to use it. Practice on the repeaters before you need it. Do not wait for an emergency to find out how your radio works.

K7 is right about the licence and the antenna, but I will push back a little on price. You don't need to spend 300 dollars.

I run low power. My go-bag has a used Yaesu I got for 120 at a hamfest, five years old but solid. Good antenna, good wire, I can hit repeaters thirty miles out. Buy REAL equipment, but used is fine -- a used Icom or Kenwood from five years ago is still ten times the cheap new handheld. And yes, get the licence. The licence is the foundation.

Quentin is right. Used is fine. Hamfest radios from the real manufacturers are good. Used handheld, decent antenna, you're in the game under 200 total. My point stands on the cheap $40 special. Those are not radios. They are decorations.

One thing K7 is implying but not saying: when you go on the air, you are visible. Licensed hams can be looked up. You are putting yourself on a list that already exists. If that concerns you, understand it going in. The licence is legal; the visibility is just part of what it is.

That said, if you want radio that actually works when you need it, you must practise on something legal. Unlicensed transmit is a federal crime. Practise on the 2-meter repeaters as a licensed ham. Know your actual range before you bet on it.

Okay I feel stupid but I bought one of those $40 HTs at a hamfest last month thinking I was being smart. How bad is it actually? Should I just throw it away?

Don't throw it away -- use it as a paperweight or sell it. Then: find an ARRL test session near you, sign up, spend four weeks with the Technician manual (one hour a day), take the test (fourteen dollars). You will pass.

Then find a used Yaesu or Icom handheld, twenty years old and still working beats one year old and built to be garbage. Spend a hundred to a hundred-fifty. Buy a real antenna for it. Now you have a real backup instead of a decoration. The test is not hard. You already know more than you think.

I am a radio engineer by trade and I want to validate the antenna point -- it is not folksy wisdom, it is physics. The antenna is the interface between your radio and the spectrum. A 20-watt transmitter into a bad antenna loses to a 2-watt transmitter into a good one, and it is not close. Cheap-import antennas run maybe 50 percent efficient; a real whip is 90-plus. That is the difference between reaching the repeater and not. Get the radio. Get the antenna. Learn how the antenna works.

Honestly the whole ham thing sounds too complicated -- studying for a test, hamfests, all of it. I just want a simple backup for my house and bag. Is there something that doesn't involve getting licensed?