Category: HT’s

  • What I Look For In A Ham Radio HT

    The exact checklist I run every handheld radio through before it earns a spot in my lineup, plus a full comparison table covering ham, GMRS, and commercial HTs.

  • Choosing Your First HT: A Buyer’s Framework Beyond “Just Get a Baofeng”

    Part of our Handheld Radios (HTs) guide. “Just get a Baofeng” is common advice for a new ham’s first HT, and it is not wrong exactly, but it skips over a decision that deserves a bit more thought than grabbing the cheapest radio on the shelf. What a Budget Radio Actually Gets You Radios like…

  • Yaesu FT5D Review: Fusion’s Flagship Handheld

    Part of our Handheld Radios (HTs) guide. The FT5D sits at the top of Yaesu’s Fusion handheld lineup, and it is built to showcase everything System Fusion and Wires-X can do rather than just check the digital voice box the way a budget dual-mode radio does. GPS and APRS Integration Built-in GPS feeds directly into…

  • Icom ID-52 Review: D-STAR’s Flagship Handheld

    Part of our Handheld Radios (HTs) guide. If you have gotten into D-STAR and are ready to move past a budget dual-band handheld, the ID-52 is Icom’s answer to what a flagship D-STAR radio should be, and it shows in almost every part of the radio. Display and Interface The ID-52’s color display is a…

  • Icom IC-705 Review: A Compact SDR QRP Radio for the Field

    Part of our Handheld Radios (HTs) guide. The IC-705 was one of the first radios to bring genuine SDR performance into a battery-powered, backpack-friendly package, and it remains one of the most capable portable radios on the market years after launch. What Makes It Different Unlike the Xiegu G90 or Yaesu FT-891, the IC-705 covers…

  • BTECH GMRS-V2 Review: A Budget GMRS Handheld Worth a Look

    Part of our GMRS Radio: The Complete Guide. BTECH has built a solid reputation in the ham radio side of the budget radio market, and the GMRS-V2 is their dedicated GMRS-only handheld. Since it is not trying to double as a ham radio, it can lean fully into GMRS-specific features without the compromises that come…

  • Radio Field Cards: Quick-Reference Programming Guides

    Part of our Handheld Radios (HTs) guide. I keep pulling up the same four questions on every new radio that lands on the bench: how do I program a repeater, how do I get into VFO mode, how do I adjust power, and how do I scan. Every radio buries these in a different menu…

  • Programming Cables Compared: Which One Actually Works Reliably

    Part of our Handheld Radios (HTs) guide. A programming cable should be a boring, reliable piece of gear. In practice, cheap ones are a genuinely common source of frustration, driver problems, connection failures partway through a write, and radios that seem to accept a program but come out wrong. The chipset inside the cable matters…

  • CHIRP: Free Programming Software for Your Handheld Radio

    Programming a handheld one channel at a time on its tiny keypad is genuinely miserable. CHIRP is the free tool nearly everyone switches to instead, and it works across a huge range of radios.

  • Ailunce HD2 Review: A Great EmComm Handout Radio, With a Warning

    I use the Ailunce HD2 as a preprogrammed EmComm handout radio, but there’s a documented spurious emissions problem you need to know about before you buy.

  • What Handheld Radio Should I Get for Emergency Comms?

    GMRS, ham VHF/UHF, repeaters, and HF, compared for emergency comms with real-world vs best-case range expectations, plus my actual pick by scenario.

  • Baofeng UV-5R Review: Why I No Longer Recommend It

    Part of our Handheld Radios (HTs) guide. I don’t own a UV-5R anymore, and at this point I don’t recommend picking one up. It’s still the radio that got more people licensed and on the air than almost anything else over the last decade, and that matters even with a mediocre receiver. But the market…

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