okay so i just passed my technician exam last week (finally) and everyone keeps telling me to just get a cheap baofeng to start but then other people are saying those are junk and i should save up for something better. im not trying to spend a ton of money right out of the gate but i also dont want to buy something twice if you know what i mean.

mostly ill be using it for local repeaters and maybe some simplex stuff when i go hiking with my brother who is also getting licensed. i looked at the yaesu ft-65 and the vx-3r and honestly have no idea what the differences even mean in practical terms. does the dual band thing actually matter for a new person or is that just a nice to have. and whats the deal with the chirp software everyone mentions, is that something i need right away

sorry for all the questions just trying to figure out where to start

congrats on the ticket first of all. so the baofeng debate is basically endless and honestly both sides have a point. they work fine for listening and basic repeater use, the build quality is just not great and the transmit audio can be pretty mediocre. for what you're describing though, local repeaters and hiking with your brother, a uv-5r or one of the uv-82 variants would get you on the air for like 30 bucks while you figure out what you actually want.

that said if you can stretch to the ft-65r you probably wont regret it. yaesu's audio is noticeably better and its just a more solid radio in hand. the vx-3r is tiny which is cool but the battery life suffers for it.

dual band absolutely matters, most areas have both 2m and 70cm repeaters and you'll want access to both eventually. and yes get familiar with chirp sooner rather than later, programming these things by hand is possible but annoying, chirp makes it take like 10 minutes instead of an hour

i was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and ended up going with the baofeng uv-5r just to have something while i saved up. its been fine honestly, i made my first contacts on it and everything. but i did eventually get a wouxun kg-uv9d and the difference in audio quality on both ends is pretty noticable, people stopped asking me to repeat myself lol

chirp is super easy dont stress about it, just download it and there are youtube videos that walk you through the whole thing in like 20 minutes. the hardest part is finding the right cable for your specific radio