Radios are black magic boxes

As of today, I've passed my ARRL technician exam. This means that once I receive a callsign from the FCC early next week, I'll be able to transmit on the amateur "ham" bands using a radio!

While I'm excited to make radio contact with folks from many miles away and get to make new friends, that's not the reason why I'm truly excited to have a license to pursue this hobby. The real joy, to me, is in the hardware!

I learned my EMF and distributed networks theory from an angry Korean man in college, and I barely passed those classes. Up until I've started getting interested in radio, any form of RF theory has been black magic to me. As a further extension of that viewpoint, radios are black magic boxes. Having to research, purchase, and use one of these B-M-B's is going to be a great learning experience for me.

The Paradox of Choice

One of the first things to consider when buying a radio is it's range of frequencies that it can transmit and receive on. As of today, I am licensed to transmit on Very-High and Ultra-High Frequency bands (VHF/UHF), along with a very limited subset of the High Frequency bands (HF). It's uncommon to see radios that cover all of this spectrum, and so therefore I'll want to have a radio that can cover VHF/UHF and another radio that can cover HF. While I don't have it today, I intend to soon get my General class license - meaning that the purchase of a big-ticket HF radio is soon to follow any VHF/UHF gear I pick up.

In addition to the frequencies that these radios are specified for, they also have different modes that they're capable of processing. Do I want to run AM or FM? How about digital, including GPS or other telemetry? How about a builtin soundcard to handle digital signals via a computer? All of these factors play a big part in the radio I choose and what I can do with it.

Adding yet another variable to the equation, there's the portability of a given radio. As a general rule of thumb, more portability comes at the cost of lower transmit power and quality-of-life features like a builtin soundcard or antenna tuner. We have the humble handheld transmitter (HT), coming in as the most portable yet underpowered option. A step up are mobile transceivers, with higher power and better features, yet not quite the top-of-the-line devices. Finally, we have the base station class radios, with all the bells and whistles plus lots of output power to juice up your antenna. In my mind, I already have a rough gameplan for the places I want to operate my radios, and portability is a big factor for me.

So to take away anything from these past few paragraphs, it's that things like frequency, modes, and portability are the key items to focus on when looking for a radio. There's even more items to add to the decision matrix like usability, power efficiency, accessories, etc. For someone like me that gets paralyzed by choice, I need to focus on the core functionality and not get wrapped up in all the little details - otherwise i'll never even buy a radio by the time my technician license lapses in 2035!

One bit of advice I gleaned from a coworker who has been in the radio hobby for the past few years is: You'll enjoy the hobby more if your hardware is easy to use. I think this applies to both the radio's RF performance and it's physical controls and programming. It would be easy to buy the cheapest options, however I don't know if I'll enjoy using that cheap gear to start out.

I think I'll need to bite the bullet and get a quality radio, however I haven't figured out which one that is yet. More to come on this, as I dive into the rabbit hole.