so i just passed my technician last month and ive been lurking here reading about HTs for like three weeks now and honestly its made things worse lol. everyone seems to have strong opinions and i keep going back and forth between a few options.

right now im looking at the Baofeng UV-5R just because its cheap and everyone says its fine for a beginner, but then i read that the receive is noisy or something and maybe its not actually part 97 compliant? i dont fully understand that part. then theres the Yaesu FT-60R which seems way more solid but its like 5x the price. and ive seen people mention the BF-F8HP as kind of a middle ground but im not sure if thats just the same radio with more watts.

mostly i want to hit the local repeaters, maybe do some simplex in emergencies, and eventually get into APRS if thats a thing you can do on a handheld. i dont need anything crazy. budget is probably under $150 if i can help it but i could stretch a little. any thoughts from people who have actually used these would be helpful, i feel like im just reading spec sheets at this point.

Welcome to the hobby, you picked a good time to ask this actually because this exact question comes up a lot and the answers have kind of shifted over the years as more options appeared.

The Part 97 thing you mentioned — the short version is the Baofeng will work fine for ham use, the compliance question is more about whether it meets FCC rules for transmitting on non-ham frequencies, which you shouldnt be doing anyway. So dont let that scare you off if the price point makes sense for your situation.

That said, if youve got even a little more room to spend, the FT-60R really is a different class of radio. The receiver is noticeably better, the audio is louder and clearer, and mine has been dropped more times than i care to admit and still works perfectly. For APRS you'd actually want to look at something like the Yaesu FT2DR or one of the newer dual-band HTs with built-in APRS support, but thats definitely a later upgrade kind of thing, not where you need to start.

Honestly my suggestion would be grab the FT-60R and spend the rest of your budget on a decent nagoya antenna. The stock rubber duck antennas on most of these radios are kind of mediocre and a good aftermarket whip makes a real difference on receive especially.

i started with a UV-5R and have zero regrets honestly, it got me on the air and i learned a ton just fumbling around with it. the menu system is annoying but you figure it out. been using it for almost two years now and it still works fine for hitting repeaters around town.

that said i did eventually get a Kenwood TH-D74 and yeah the difference is pretty humbling, but thats also like a $500 radio so not really a fair comparison. for getting started the cheap baofeng totally does the job, just download chirp before you do anything else or you will spend hours manually programming it and regret your life choices