Oh nice. I see it for ~$80 on their site, but still, that’s cool. Never heard of it. I ended up getting a Xiegu G90 for HF. I’m curious how well the RT-880 works for HF. Gonna see if there are any reviews of it. I would’ve loved to know about it last year lol.

There’s no restriction to purchase this stuff, so licensing will only stop accidents, not intentional bad actors. Even Baofengs can be put into a “ham mode” so they don’t transmit out of band. I don’t think we’d see it happen, but a license class under technician targeted at getting people legally able to use lower power handhelds super quickly would be nice. Even the technician question bank has questions about things that ultimately don’t really matter for making sure people operate in band as they should. The metaphor I give folks is like if your driver’s license test asked you questions about how to build engines. (And part of the reason we won’t ever see that is because amateur radio licenses allow you to construct and use your own equipment, as opposed to things like FRS where the part itself has to be certified.)

I get you, it’s pretty easy, but I’m just saying trying to get somebody into a hobby, and then saying “actually you can’t talk to people until you schedule a test” is a huge barrier.

All the more reason to moderate it and find weird cookie cutters and have other people draw.

Ham radio played a massive role while the Internet was out following hurricane Helene. https://youtu.be/w8hSHq8dGsA

If you don’t know how to use a radio or set it up before the emergency then it’s useless. You need to be ready before. And part of getting ready and learning is being licensed.

2m doesn’t bounce off the atmosphere. You really need 10m for that. 6m in the mist perfect ideal scenarios but it’s still very rare (and in this scenario you aren’t gonna know when). EME (the moon stuff) is also pretty tricky and requires a lot of power because of how messed up the signals get in the process.

That’s not an emergency scenario, that’s an apocalyptic scenario.

Like what? Can you name one?

Get a TIDRADIO TD-H3 instead of a Baofeng. Essentially the same price but a nicer feature set.

Also, be sure to get the GMRS one. They’re all the same and can be reset to any mode, but the way the law with FRS/GMRS works is technically the part itself (the radio) needs to be certified.

It’s very important that you do not reset it and use it improperly. I would never do such a thing and I suggest you don’t either.

FT8 is fun and doesn’t require talking. CW too but you need to learn Morse code.

I bring FRS radios (normal ol’ walkie talkies) to the local Renaissance festival which has awful to no cell reception. It works great.

But yeah the barrier to even getting a technician license is too high. You get people that get excited and wanna do stuff and then they’re told they can’t. So things like meshtastic where they actually can do radio related things without a license are great.

They list the elevation.

Now, they made boards with more power that operated and crossed at several different frequency bands, specially shortwave, then meshtastic would be an incredibility powerful too. However illegal.

Sounds like you should look into getting an amateur radio license!

Also, power isn’t really the issue. Power only helps you while sending, not while receiving. What you want is a good antenna which helps with both sending and receiving. For example, if you’re somewhere remote but you know there’s a city in a specific direction you could get a directional antenna like a yagi and point it that way.

When I think of pagers I think of receiving only, not sending. Meshtastic devices can typically do both.

Licensed amateur radio operator here in the US. Meshtastic does not require an amateur radio license.

Is that a banana on your face or are you just excited to see me?

Oops. 🍌 Gonna hide my type behind this.

Use a surgical mask instead of a banana. It feels less aggressive.

Okay? But why? StackOverflow’s moderation is inadequate as well.