ok so i finally passed my technician exam last week and now im trying to figure out what handheld to buy. ive been reading forums and watching youtube for like 3 weeks and im more confused now than when i started honestly. everyone says something different.

some people say just get a baofeng uv-5r to start and learn on it, other people act like youre committing a crime if you touch one. then theres the yaesu ft-65 and the ft-60 which i keep seeing mentioned but theyre kind of old? and then the wouxun stuff and the anytone d878 which is way more money. i dont even know if i need DMR yet or if i should just start with analog fm.

i mostly want to use it for local repeaters and maybe some simplex stuff with a friend who just got licensed too. budget is flexible but i dont want to spend 300 bucks on something i might not even use that much. what would you guys actually recommend for someone just starting out

congrats on the ticket first of all. ok so honest answer — for just hitting local repeaters and messing around on simplex with a buddy, you really dont need to overthink this. a yaesu ft-65 is a solid little radio, easy to program, sounds good on receive, holds up well. its not fancy but it just works and thats kind of what you want when youre learning because you wanna be focused on actually operating not fighting with the radio.

the baofeng thing is one of those debates that never ends. they work, plenty of hams use them, the build quality is just not as good and the receiver isnt great so you can end up with a lot of interference on busy RF environments. for a starter radio though if budget is tight theres no shame in it. ive seen new hams go baofeng for a year then upgrade once they knew what they actually wanted.

i wouldnt jump to DMR right away personally. learn the basics first, get comfortable with repeater etiquette and just talking on the air. you can always add a digital radio later once you know if thats even a direction you want to go. the ft-65 is probably 60-70 bucks used and thats a good starting point.

i was in exactly the same spot about a year ago and ended up getting the yaesu ft-4xr which is even cheaper than the ft-65 and honestly been really happy with it. does everything i need for local stuff. the audio is decent and i havent had any issues programing it with chirp.

one thing nobody told me when i was starting out — get chirp set up before you do anything else, programming these things from the front panel is kind of a nightmare on most HTs. makes loading in your local repeaters way easier