OK, I’m trying to get serious about this now. On the following pages, are products that you can buy from Amazon that will help you have fun with amateur radio. Don’t take their appearance as a personal endorsement, although I will say that there are some amateur radio products on Amazon that I chose not to include here for whatever reason.
If you have a suggestions for products that I should list on this page, please e-mail me. I’d like to make this page into a list of books and products that my readers and I have found useful and fun. Having said that, I’ll just add that if you are planning to buy one of these books, I really would appreciate it if you’d buy it from one of the links below. If you do, I get a small percentage of the purchase price. Thanks!
If you’re looking for license study guides, take a look at my No-Nonsense amateur radio license study guides.
Wilson Lamb says
If you don’t have one, a tower and beam are the first things to get with your $5K.
There’s absolutely no need for another rig and the beam will do more for you anyway.
A T-8 or T-10 will get 20-10 meters and make you MANY contacts! Look for used and go for 40-50 feet tall. It’s cheap. Much more so if you get a used tribander, but you lose WARC coverage, which is often DX rich.
The scope is a great thing, but the spectrum analyzer won’t get much use.
Some sort of antenna analyzer will help you, and many of your friends, some of whom will be new.
Spending money doesn’t produce near the satisfaction of building or fixing something.
Keep 2-3K$ in reserve for unexpected opportunities.
WL
Dan KB6NU says
Well, there’s no way for me to put up a tower where I am, so that’s out. I already have an an antenna analyzer, plus an antenna analyzer kit waiting to be built. I’m hoping that I can also use the spectrum analyzer for my professional work. I’ve been talking to a cell-phone repeater vendor about doing some tests for them.
S-weikel says
I know nothing about ham radios and would like to learn so I’ll order your study guides but at the very lease I am sure I need a ham radio by whatever other name it is called. Any suggestions for someone who literally has no equipment as to what to get to start off to learn this hobby? Thank you.