[Hoot Gibson]

That’s awesome Hoot. I randomly got a Baofeng UV/5RA for Christmas and have watched YouTube videos extensively since Christmas on ham radio. Pretty interesting thing to get into and I started studying for my test for my tech license also. But with Covid no where around me doing any types of testing right now so I don’t know when I’ll be able to take it

That's a tough break getting interested in the hobby at a time that you can't take the license exam. There are many branches of the hobby and there are a lot of activities that you could choose to participate in to learn while you wait to become licensed. Depending on where you live, there may be an active ham radio club in your area that is using Zoom, Skype, etc, for meetings. I belong to the Virginia Wireless Society, which is a pretty large club in northern Virginia. There is a Lake Cumberland club (LCARA) that posts about club activities on Youtube pretty frequently. My guess is that most clubs would welcome you before you get your license because of the COVID situation. There are small local clubs spread throughout the country.

In fact, if you become active in a club, the members may be able to administer the test for you. Testing is done by volunteer organizations that are approved by the FCC. Many clubs include members who are Volunteer Examiners. Most clubs are affiliated with the ARRL, so that would be the first place to check for clubs in your area.

The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is a great source of information (ARRL) for the hobby.

I will post additional details about the hobby in this thread.

I’m in Pikeville, KY. Have asked just about everyone I know about a club in my area but haven’t been able to find one in Pikeville or around Pikeville. I’ve currently programmed my Baofeng to monitor a repeater that is near by me but only hear a couple things here and there throughout the day. Doesn’t seem to be too active. But I can’t wait till I get my license so that I can transmit on the airwaves and try building up the community around me.

Most repeaters are not very busy even in areas where there are lots of hams. There is a lot of activity that uses DMR, D-STAR (mostly Icom), and Fusion (Yaesu) digital networks. These systems connect repeaters via the internet. The details of each system are too complex to get into here but the popularity of these systems is probably the main reason that repeaters do not seem to be as busy as they once were. Using them requires more expensive equipment but you can connect to them through a repeater from home or from a vehicle in Kentucky and communicate with people driving in Australia, for example. Of these three systems, DMR is the cheapest but more difficult to configure. Fusion and D-STAR are simpler to configure but the equipment is more expensive.

Repeaters get busier when clubs volunteer to provide communications for special events like marathons.

I believe that the closest clubs to Pikeville are located in Hazard, Paintsville, and Louisa.

You might want to consider buying a relatively inexpensive receiver to get more familiar with the various ham bands and modes. Prices for Software Defined Radios (SDRs) start at under $30 and fairly good quality SDRs can be purchased in the $100 to $200 range. Using an SDR would give you some experience designing and building antennas. A decent SDR will give pretty good results when paired with resonant antennas.

One piece of equipment that forgot to mention in my first post is the antenna analyzer. If you find that you enjoy designing and building antennas, and antenna analyzer is invaluable but they are not cheap. The most popular quality models are made by RigExpert, MFJ, and Comet. They are not a necessity but they are big time savers and provide a great deal of information about the performance of your antennas.

If your ultimate goal is to operate on the HF bands and your budget allows it, you might want to skip the SDR and buy either an HR transceiver or a so-called shack in a box, which covers HF, VHF, and UHF frequencies. You could use the radio as a receiver until you get your license. Deciding on a particular brand and model for your first transceiver will depend on how you plan to use it. If you are interested in portable operation, then you will want a smaller, lighter transceiver. You really can't go wrong with a transceiver from one of the Japanese "big 3," Icom, Yaesu, and Kenwood. They all offer a wide range of radios at comparable price points. There are other quality brands such as Elecraft, FlexRadio, but they are mostly higher end radios. There are also cheaper Chinese brands such as Xiegu but you would probably be more satisfied with a Big 3 radio as a first rig.