Hey! I bought a ham radio on Amazon to talk to my son in Florida.

 said the guy in Oregon, holding up a $29.95 Baofeng handi-talkie.

"Someone said you can talk to the International Space Station with one!"

Well, you can send a message to the ISS with one. I saw a pretty good Youtube of someone doing it with a Yaesu FT60R once so I suppose it can be done with a Baofeng but you have to build a Yagi antenna and set the radio up for one of the digital modes and the ISS has to be well over the horizon.

Still, out of the box with the 'rubber ducky' antenna your range radio to radio is probably between one and five miles across decent terrain. Of course, if you can hit a repeater the range increases but that's because you are having a repeater repeat and boost your transmission.

Did I mention that you're supposed to have a license before you transmit? That thought never crossed your mind, did it? Or maybe it did and you're too lazy and/or stupid to get one. The FCC emergency clause goes only so far. 

Still, they're a pretty good cost efficient way for a newly licensed ham to get on the air if he can hit a local repeater. If not, his odds of getting an answer are fairly slim. Still, with a decent antenna a newly minted ham can probably handle local repeater traffic with one, even if it's my first choice.

DX is definitely out of the question with one.

Of course, you're not interested in getting licensed because you want it for emergency use to get in touch with your son that's 2500 miles away.

What were you thinking? Did you really think you could get in touch with your son 2500 miles away with a $29.95 radio you bought just because it's a 'ham radio'?

Before you jump into something look at where you're jumping from and where you are going to land. Do a little homework.

The Baofeng is basically  a 2 meter transceiver and is fairly useless for any long distance communications and ham radio in itself, including HF, is certainly not a reliable 24/7 form of communication. 

Look up a station with the call sign KE5EE sometime. The man has ten towers on his land and it is a real superstation. Yet with all the antennas and all the top shelf equipment he's just as much at mercy of the Gods of Propagation as the 5 watt QRP station is. If the bands are not working they are not working. 

While the superstation can certainly do better than the little guy, he's got no guarantee.

You heard that ham radios operators talk to people all over the world. We do but it's never a sure thing. We at the mercy of the Gods of Propagation. 

If you think that your $29.95 special will get you routine communication across a continent then I have a nice bridge to sell you.

Did it ever occur to you that if it was capable of transcontinental communication them everyone would have one and we wouldn't need cell phones?



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