so i just passed my technician exam last week and im looking at getting my first handheld radio. i've been doing a ton of reading and honestly its making my head spin a little. like there's the baofeng route which everyone seems to have an opinion about, and then theres yaesu and kenwood and icom and they're all like 3-4x the price for what looks like similar specs on paper.

my main use case is probably just local repeaters, maybe some simplex with a buddy who also just got licensed, and id love to eventually do some APRS stuff if thats possible from a handheld. i dont really have a home station set up yet so the HT would be my only radio for a while. budget is flexible but i dont want to spend money on features i wont use for years.

someone at the club mentioned the Yaesu FT-60R and another guy said look at the VX-6R because its submersible. do i really need waterproofing for casual use? also does the dual band vs tri-band thing matter much starting out? sorry for all the questions just trying to not make a dumb first purchase

totally understand the overwhelm, i went through the same thing about two years ago. honestly for where you're at, the FT-60R is a really solid first radio — its not fancy but its built well, audio is loud and clear, and the receive is noticeably better than the cheap chinese stuff. battery lasts forever too which matters more than you'd think when you're just learning the ropes and forget to charge things.

the VX-6R is great but youre paying extra for the waterproofing and some other bells and whistles that you probably wont use right away. unless you hike in the rain a lot or something. tri-band is nice to have eventually but honestly on 2m and 70cm youll find 95% of the repeater activity anyway so dont stress about that.

for APRS from a handheld you'd either want something like the FT3DR or FT5DR which have it built in, or you can pair a regular HT with an external TNC and your phone using something like APRSdroid — thats actually how a lot of people do it. the built-in APRS radios are pricier but man they're convenient once you get into it.

if budget is a real concern the baofengs work, people use them, but plan on spending some time on the programming software to get them set up right and dont expect the receiver to ignore interference as well as the japanese radios do. anyway welcome to the hobby, youre gonna have fun with this

i was in literally the exact same spot six months ago lol. ended up getting a UV-5R just to have something cheap to learn on while i figured out what i actually wanted, and then picked up a FT-70DR a few months later. the FT-70 does fusion digital and analog both which is cool if any repeaters near you run Yaesu Fusion — worth checking before you buy actually since that might tip the decision one way or another.

the baofeng gets a lot of grief but tbh for a new ham just listening to repeaters and doing simplex it does the job. my main gripe was the menu system is kinda confusing and CHIRP basically becomes required to program it without losing your mind. the yaesu menus are better but still not exactly intuitive haha