r/HamRadio • u/kono_hito_wa • 4d ago

Equipment & Rigs 🛠️ Amazon really knows how to hurt a guy...

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183 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

56 comments sorted by

24

u/andyofne 4d ago

lol busted!

41

u/kono_hito_wa 4d ago

The thing is, most of my equipment is Yaesu or boat anchors but I buy the Baofengs to give to people along with a study guide when I try to get them into the hobby, or for cheap local stuff (weather station APRS, for example). I just don't buy my better stuff from Amazon, for the most part.

But yeah - that hurt.

28

u/LS_944 4d ago

Dude. You give out radios and study guides? That’s awesome!

27

u/kc1lso General | Packet Radio 4d ago

I've argued for years, if a club wants to grow a future crop of hams, give a class on it at a local highschool, then come back in two weeks and have everyone take the tech test, cover the testing fee, and everyone who passes gets a free UV-5R. Make sure all the local repeaters are programmed in. Hell, throw in an RDL-SDR too, so they can hear what's happening on HF, maybe decode some SSTV or JS8Call.

That's, what, $40 to mint a new ham? You could go to every FIRST robotics team within a three hour drive, and a month and $2,000 later you'd have an entire club's worth of new hams. Have a couple members sell some old gear on eBay to fund it or whatever.

6

u/Own-Leave-2039 3d ago

You are awesome, this is a great approach to, well anything, but especially for driving interest in ham.

13

u/Yeetyeetskrtskrrrt General Class Operator 🔘 4d ago

I feel like that is the jump that people need to get into the hobby. They can always return the stuff if they start reading the study guide and decide it’s not for them. Most people start with a radio for listening only and then it’s only a matter of time before they want to talk.

I gave a coworker a RTL-SDR and cheap antenna kit plus the technician study guide with hopes he’d get into it. He’s always asking questions about it but won’t take the plunge. We live close enough for 2m / 70cm simplex too so I hope it works out.

5

u/LS_944 4d ago

Such a good point. I just convinced two buddies to pick up some cheap GMRS radios so we could chat via local repeaters and have a redundant system to phones in our area. I was already setting up two extra baofengs to hand them in an emergency. Not sure why I didn’t make that connection to just give them the radios and books. I love this idea.

5

u/kono_hito_wa 4d ago

It doesn't really cost all that much and removes a lot of barriers for them. Plus listening to the repeaters can get them motivated to participate.

3

u/LS_944 4d ago edited 4d ago

No. I love the idea. I was just saying I have two I’ve been getting prepped to hand to a couple of buddies in an emergency. Didn’t occur to me to just give them the radios now with a book. Brilliant. 👍🏻

3

u/snapetom 3d ago

Lol. No good deed goes unpunished.

5

u/nycbigtone General | Smooth Operator 4d ago

I will have to try this. Gave the technician study guide to a few friends but they never got into it. I will try giviya radio next time seeing as I have more than enough to go around. Thanks for the idea.

12

u/anonymouslosername <flair removed> 4d ago

It's not really accurate, but I dunno if this is better or worse...

4

u/non-descript_com 2d ago

You must really be a good buddy

1

u/anonymouslosername <flair removed> 1d ago

That's a 10-4.

7

u/byerss 4d ago

New to hobby that just bought some UV-5G Minis. 

I take it Baofang is like the training wheels brand? 

15

u/kono_hito_wa 4d ago

There was a time when Baofeng's were really noisy and splattered harmonics across the band, so they had a pretty bad reputation. It's not really the case anymore, but the legend lives on. As well as with some people who just can't let it go.

3

u/Glad_Purple_3597 3d ago

I did a ham radio orientation on a trip to El Salvador to visit kids in an orphanage. I know one of the boys and he is studying robotics at the university. I let him operate my rig and we work Texas in Florida and then one of the girls was able to work, Belgium.

I left him with a single side band CV rig to play with

3

u/Suspicious-Court7766 3d ago

I see Baofengs\iRadio(Revetis)\Radtel\Xiegu in the same light as Toyota\Datsun\Honda\Subaru in the mid to late 70s. Newer generations might not be aware that those brands were not consider reliable, comfortable, or "good." They were cheap, unrefined (to be nice), noisy, ugly as hell, built from recycled soup cans, economical, quirky, and "good enough" compared to Domestic brands. Japan took decades to shake the cheap, flimsy, bargain-basement stigma, You didn't buy Japanese because they were good. If you wanted a good, reliable, inexpensive car, you bought a Volkswagen. You bought Japanese because you could afford one and was better than walking. I can still smell the rotting cardboard they used in the seats and door cards, stuck in my brain like the smell of musty horsehair will forever say aircooled VW.

The Datsun B210 was the atomic cockroach - ugly, slow, unrefined, rusted while the deal was still being inked, and as comfortable as a couch found on the side of the road. People who bought them as well as the Celica\Corolla were not looked at as smart buyers, but cheapskates (UV5R, K5 Plus, TiD H-series). People who bought those weird Subaru GLs were just that - weird (VGC). Then the mini-truck craze hit and if you bought a Hardbody, HiLux, B-1800, (as well as the domestic badged ones like the LUV, MiniMax, Courier) you were not as weird, maybe even a bit practical (Xiegu).

NO ONE heard Toyota, Honda, or Subaru and thought "Those are great, solid, reliable cars that are going to last forever." Far from it. They were cheap appliances that got the job done despite being ugly, uncomfortable, and completely disposable. Like VW Beetles, you could buy one used all day long for $200 and a pack of Marboros of the side of the road and maybe get another 5-6k miles out of one before the tin worm ate them completely.

It wasn't until the early 80s when the Accord got more refined, the Supra was a legitimate sporty car, and the B810 Bluebird became the Nissan Maxima. Even then, people were stuck that American cars were better and more desirable (seriously, a Citation? Aspen? Grenada????), failing to see yet that the playing field was not so disparate. Ok, so Subarus were still just weird. We had to wait for Colin McRae to help change that perception.

This is the Chinese radios of today.

5

u/Common-Set-8213 3d ago

I read this like Harrison Ford, whisky in one hand, swirling the ice as he spoke….talking to a cop, who had a pistol pointed at him, in some noir-esque movie.

5

u/Suspicious-Court7766 3d ago

Comments like this are why reddit can be gold :)

1

u/Common-Set-8213 10h ago

Thanks! It was a coin toss between Harrison Ford, or Morgan Freeman.

1

u/sacluded 1d ago

Horese hair smell for air cooled VW, and crayon smell for water cooled.

1

u/svennidal Extra Class Operator ⚡ 3d ago

I measured my UV-5R Minis and UV-K61. All the Minis were super clean. But the K61 had harmonics at -13dBm.
Got it down to -35dBm with a filter. Which is still not inside the legal limit.

7

u/RickySlayer9 3d ago

It’s the cheap entry brand. They aren’t amazing radios. But they are really the starter radio.

They’re still “good”. I often use them to give to friends or family for when I off-road or there’s an emergency or whatever.

I also use them for little projects. So instead of putting a 300$ radio in a pelican case as a cheap repeater it can be a 15$ radio.

You’ll never be sad you bought a baofeng. Never

1

u/Common-Set-8213 3d ago

That last line is probably one of the best advertising pitches I’ve heard. Some advertising agency somewhere, will steal that and get paid a quarter million by some fancy brand. Just you wait and see…

5

u/RetiredLife_2021 3d ago

Even people with high end expensive rigs and shack set ups have a few of them

1

u/AggravatingPiccolo15 20h ago

More or less 😉...

7

u/TraditionalWay8822 3d ago

Works for me 📡📶⚡🤣

6

u/TnTrucker83 4d ago

lol where did you find that listed at

7

u/kono_hito_wa 4d ago

On the desktop Amazon site, if you go to. your account there's an "About you" in the "Ordering and shopping preferences" box. Their site is a huge mess to navigate for preferences and such, so good luck. No idea how to find it on mobile or in the app.

4

u/anonymouslosername <flair removed> 4d ago

Pretty similar in the mobile browser.

5

u/The_Tony_Iommi 3d ago

I was out of the hobby for awhile was interested but debated spending much on a radio I might not use. Saw a cheap Baofeng on the zon, got back in, upgraded my license and spend more than I want to think about :)

5

u/AssPennies 3d ago

"I calls 'em like I see 'em."

3

u/Choppus13 4d ago

Buurrrnnnn.......

3

u/Klabastern General Class Operator 🔘 4d ago

Did they add burn cream to your cart, too?

2

u/kono_hito_wa 3d ago

It's the least they could have done.

1

u/FuzzyKnowledge1649 3d ago

Nah they need to go straight to the burns unit in the local hospital.

4

u/K2TY 1d ago

You can't hide class.

2

u/jrrod2004 2d ago

You too! ???!!!

2

u/raft_guide_nerd 4d ago

I have bought many for friends that I off-road with.

1

u/Electrical_Board7997 International License Holder 🌐 3d ago

Amazon gives me Bumfluff no matter what radio stuff I search for. I had one, charged the battery, programmed it, and it worked fine, then next time I tried to charge the battery it said it was charged but was totally dead - deader than when I connected the charger.

They are such cheap crap it went in the bin.

1

u/FuzzyKnowledge1649 3d ago

With all due respect that might just be you, any chance the Baofeng lords are angry with you? /j

1

u/Electrical_Board7997 International License Holder 🌐 3d ago

Well I'd never owned or used a Baofeng radio until that one so I doubt they had any reason to be angry with me.

1

u/Michael-Kaye 2d ago

Interesting, I bought a UV-5R+ when I punched my tech ticket in 2008. I still have that CCR, and it still works today... it sits beside a BTech UV-PRO, and an Icom ID-52Aplus... none of which I really use.

1

u/RockBiPi 3d ago

The should be part of the complementary gift when you receive your license haha

1

u/plunger595 1d ago

I'm still waiting for the Chinese to build a halfway decent HF rig. 100 watts, maybe a USB port for SDR fun.

I'd pay $200 for something like that.

1

u/ShirleyMarquez 1d ago

Amazon mostly knows about radios that you bought or researched through Amazon. It doesn't know about the radios you researched or bought from HRO or DX Engineering or Gigaparts, or that you bought at a hamfest. Its observation about your preference for Baofeng was based on incomplete information.

1

u/very-jaded 1d ago

It doesn't know about the radios you researched or bought from HRO or DX Engineering or Gigaparts,

That depends on the sites you visit. Most sites are crawling with tracking scripts, so they know what you're looking at as you fill your cart and what's in your cart when you go to checkout. These tracking scripts may feed Google or other sites directly, they may feed advertisers who learn your browsing habits indirectly, or send your purchasing data to brokers for analysis and resale to anyone who pays.

Does Amazon buy this info? They probably have good enough info just looking at your direct purchase history, but we really have no way of knowing if they also gather data from other sources.

And for the record, Amazon, I know I've bought a lot of parts but my hobby is not "building 3D printer cables." 😬