Quote Originally Posted by rbeau30 View Post
If you are not sure about wanting to get into the hobby. Get a Baofeng radio for 30 bucks on Amazon. They are very capable, and can get you a feel for it before you go spending money on some serious radios. Your License is going to be 15 bucks. So all together you can get into the hobby for way less than $100 bucks.

This is the one I bought (UV-5R):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Great advice. Give it a try with little investment. If you find its not for you, not much invested. I had my Baofeng for a year before deciding I wanted to get more into it and joined ARES. Got an Icom ID-51 for Christmas last year, and its an incredible radio. Better then the Baofeng in all ways except cost. But now I have the Baofeng as a backup, and it goes with me on daily walks.

One thing to consider, Gilpinguy, is to get some local height on an antenna - makes all the difference in the world. I only have 4-5Watt HTs that I use from my basement study, but have 60' of good coax to an attic mounted Diamond X-50AN 2M/70cm antenna. Sounds fantastic and I can hit other HTs 10 miles away on simplex (no repeater) without a perfect LOS.

A technician level license and an inexpensive dual band HT ought to be considered mandatory survival gear.