HAM Radio Starter Kit - Information for Beginners

[AshWilliams]

While there is a 'convenience' to programming the Baofeng with the CHIRP software, it can be confusing as it adds lots of frequencies you may never use.

It's not too hard to manually program the Baofeng and once you get it down you can add and remove frequencies very easily.

This works for me anyway and I don't have a lot of 'clutter' on my HTs.

You can add only what you want with CHIRP including a proximity search using reapeaterbook. I think you're referring to loading up one of those prepper frequencies template files that are floating around, but even if you use one of those you can delete the stuff you don't want and flash it back to the radio.

That said, it's probably a good idea to learn how to do it manually as well.

 

[Nutty4Guns]

Awesome, thank you for the tips!

Just make sure you get a real Nagoya. There are fakes out there.

 

[mjones016]

This is great information

 

[The Heretic]

 

[kopcicle]

.

 

[kopcicle]

Hack Rifle | Hunter Scott

 

[Bacchus]

The Guerrilla's Guide to The Baofeng Radio, referenced by a couple posts in this thread, was written by a US Army Special Reconnaissance Unit member. It is very specific to Baofeng radios. It has detail diagrams and explanation and even parts for implementing different antenna schemes in the field.

By Chapter:

1. Some limited discussion on the advantages of different ham radio bands for certain operations or environments.
2. Some information about the different controls on a Baofeng radio (hereafter referred to as "radio"), including all the buttons, frequency and memory modes, and front panel programming. He suggests how every single menu option should be configured.
3. Communications Planning including search and rescue encryption grid; mission planning including contingency and emergency; and passwords.
4. Handling radio traffic and reports.
5. Antennas, with discussion of different types and how to implement them.
6. Communications Operations.
7. Digital Encoding.

App A. Using a Baofeng as a repeater

So a lot of this is support for a well-trained military guerrilla squad. Interesting, but not apropos for me. I will utilize his info from Chapters 1, 2, and 5, especially his suggestions for configuration of each menu option.

I also am going to look at his chapter on using a Baofeng as a repeater, I think that would be a very interesting project.

 

[Bacchus]

I didn't see Basic SHTF Radio referenced in any of the posts, but also is a gold mine of information for beginners and also for SHTF local applications. It is written by a member of a county sheriff's office:

https://www.donshift.com/

By page number:

8. Discussion of GMRS, FRS, CB, MURS.
19. Ham Radio
23. Band Types
27. Propagation
32. Prowords and codes
37. Equipment
39. Antennas
43. Radios in rural areas
45. Repeaters
50. Distress calls
52. Emergency radio network
57. Scanners
64. Communication Security (COMSEC)
65. Encryption/deceptive messages
70. Transmission COMSEC
74. Electronic warfare basics
75. Beating radio interception
77. Misusing other bands
78. Unpopular bands
80. Jamming
84. Legal considerations
89. Lessons from the Chechen wars (10 lessons)
100. Creating your own simplex voice channel plan

So quite a bit of info on COMSEC.

 

[RVTECH]

The Guerrilla's Guide to The Baofeng Radio

Sounds like an informative book for someone starting out with Baofengs.

They are a bit 'quirky' and the 'manual' that comes with it is all but useless.

Fortunately I dug around on the 'net and managed to find a couple YT vids that were pretty informative and got me on the right track to manually programming it.

 

[Bacchus]

Sounds like an informative book for someone starting out with Baofengs.

Starts out that way, and then gets into what seems to me hard core guerrilla comm.

I haven't tried to manually program my Baofengs, I've done okay with CHIRP. Manual programming will be an essential skill at some point to make changes away from my laptop.

 

[ATCclears]

A comment on buying handheld transceivers (HT's). Ensure the unit supports a short name that can be displayed with the memory location. It makes it easier to use, even with an abbreviated name limited to say 7 characters.

For example, my first HT was the Baofeng UV-3R+. It's a tiny, small radio. ...but it doesn't have a short name in the display (just the memory location and frequency).

Here is a snippet of my CHIRP .csv file so you can see some abbreviated names I've created for various memory locations. The name is the second column (e.g. GMRS 09).