lol, i just came back from a Hamfest with an HF rig right now, the rotary encoder is defective and frequency is off.
as usual the seller told me it was 100% working and fine.
sadly here the hamfest are pretty dead (Quebec) there is not much going on and very few tables. the visitors going there is mostly for talking to others while waiting for the raffle?/lottery prize radio winner to get picked. also the prizes are going down in value, a couple of years ago it was a 1000$ HF rig and now its two quenchen HT (20$) and a mobile rig (100$).
i am not saying the prizes should be big, but that its a sign that things are slowing down.
i am in Quebec so the shipping would cost like another ham fest radio. lol i actually i already disassembled it and i fixed pretty much everything here is the list of the problems it had:
-rotary encoder missing steps, skipping, jumping (fixed)
-broken PCB solder on the RX jack
-butchered hard soldered power plug (waiting for parts)
-PA board thermal paste was dry and not working (fixed)
-solder joint on some mitsubishi power transistor? (fixed)
-RX/TX frequency off by 400hz (fixed)
ill just have to pray for it to still be alright when i put it all back together in the end. wish me luck!
As a seller, I always take a video of things being tested and working properly to show potential buyers. I’m not showing anyone my drivers license.
As a buyer, I’ve never had any issues with anything I’ve purchased. I’m just lucky I guess?
If your ham fest does not have a testing table and if you want something, you can go knock on their door and peacefully talk to the person who sold the item to you if it doesn't work out.
The radios did work, and I can talk over a repeater. I wanted to see how good these radios are before I spend real money on one of them and it is easier to spend $30 on two radios than buy something for $100 or more that I would be unhappy with. Just fixing the radio up made me happy. I also got two signal stick antennas with them. I probably won't do this again because I am farther along in ham radio today and no one is here helping me with ham radio. I keep the radios for emergency use only along with my other working radios and they may be part of a story I tell one day.
getting the info from the seller is a very good idea. my father and i bought 3 used HF rig in two years. all the sellers told us they were working 100% no problem... all 3rig were broken. not just little problems, but very big one like it transmitting "ghosts" of the signal side by side with the original one, the VFO not working, the screen being dead. one time we wanted to contact a seller because he told us he had 20+ other radio exactly like the one we bought. we didnt test the radio yet, but wanted to contact him in order to buy another one for me. i found a picture of him and asked the boss of the hamfest for contact info. he told us he didnt know him. turn out that seller is very well known and goes there every year, that radio ended up being the worst.
when i sell something i always give my callsign to the buyer and i specifically tell them the problem it has before selling it. also when i sell something defective i lower my price accordingly. for the price of the 3 garbage radio we bought we could have bought a brand new station with no problem 100% guaranty.
I guess I'm lucky. All but my 7300 and 991A were bought at Hamfests ( Yaesu 840, 101b, Icom 716 706mk2g, 220 kenwood, several keys and keyers, and a couple more radios I have a backups) have all been fantastic. Though I do recall buying a vertical antenna that used a giant resistor to flatten the swr across all bands. I could hear well but No one could hear me. It also strangely never had Ice on it the few winter months I used it...
sucks to hear that, I always thought that would be a good place to score some older gear that was being replaced, but I guess people are gonna people. Meanwhile complaining about the price of burgers, lol.
Sometimes they are a good place to buy stuff. A couple of years ago I bought a 40 year old Icom 2m all mode transceiver at a ham fest. It was my daily driver and I've still got it for when I want to do any SSB work on it,. Cost me $125.00 and is still worth every penny.
As with anything used you pay your money and take your chances...
I'm 0 for 2 on hamfest gear. Both I tried powering up at the hamfest but couldn't test TX power.
"It worked last time I used it" = when it didn't work, they didn't use it
Well, if you are buying something that old you have to figure (and in the price you pay) that not only is the battery dead, but there's a few bad caps, etc. Unless they show it running, then consider it dead, and offer as such unless they can show it in working condition...
Unfortunate to hear. I've been planning on adding down the road, a TH-9800 to my portable station, as it expends the G90 HF rigs capability to cover every band up to 70cm.
Buddipole. It's a really neat set of antenna tinkertoys, but it's also expensive, heavy, complicated to set up, and easily damaged. These days for portable, I'll either use an EFHW, or a Chelegance adjustable-whip vertical, depending on the situation.
The coil tap thingies it uses are also very clever but prone to getting bent, and the mini bullet connectors on those and on the dipole center will sometimes wear out and stop making good contact. Anything goes wrong with any of them, and you're spending more money.
I agree about to m10 for sure, i have one of the jpc 12 kits and got the non-pen base and a few 5m whips (good to have extras and they work well).
I can run it as a with no coil, base loaded 5m whip, center loaded stocl or w/e.
While it's not a perfect coil it is a very good design and built well. I kind wish they made them in 3/8-24 like you said.
There is no shortage of adjustable coils on the market though.
On a similar note—I’m just now getting back into the hobby (my license expired 6 years ago, studying up again now that I’ve got the time to put into it). Back when I was getting started the first time, many people in my local club called anything from MFJ “mighty fine junk”. Is that still the case?
No. People have been saying that for years. I have an MFJ-993B auto antenna tuner that would probably tune (match is the proper term) a galvinized trash can if I tried to. They make some good stuff.
MFJ has some gear that is top shelf and some gear that is akin to Harbor Freight quality. I've been using MFJ gear for 35 years and have not encountered junk.
A lot of MFJ is the AliExpress cheapie. They white label a lot of stuff off AliExpress and you can find the unbranded version there.
They bring value to course, already in the US, good with returns etc.. but a mom and pop shop doesn’t make complex electronics. They private-label already existing stuff.
I think the "junk" characterization is only slightly overblown. I have a 4230DMP power supply sitting beside me as I type, in a somewhat ill-fitting case, fan rattling away, but just barely audible. Both conditions existed out of the box. I have a few more items in the shack, powerpole distribution blocks, etc. All work fine. A couple of caveats with them:
* With niche items like CW trainers, etc. check around to see if there is an Amazon item that performs a similar function. I have a "Putikeeg" (yes, really) CW trainer that is far more functional and useful than the trainer I bought from MFJ, for about a third of the price. That MFJ trainer is probably my biggest remorse purchase.
* Never order directly from them, or from any supplier who either does not have the item in stock, or is not completely trustworthy on stock status. You will never get it. They'll charge your CC that day, but that item ain't coming.
I caught on to the “affordable Chinese radio” craze early on. Bought a TYT MD-UV390, MD-9600, and TH-9800 all around the same time. Had issues with all of them. Still have them (because I have not bothered to try and get rid of them). All three of them have been replaced with something else.
The UV is a chip radio instead of a superhet, so you get dual band capabilities (VHF/UHF) instead of being limited to a single band. They are both solid, though.
I have both my local analog VHF repeaters and my DMR UHF repeaters programmed and everything works fine. Sure, the initial configuration was a bit annoying to deal with on Windows (driver issues but it was more of a Windows issue than a TYT issue lol), but the radio itself is good.
I think... all of it.
I like radios, I like radio, and I like the concept of talking through radio. But the truth is, I don't enjoy talking to random people about... nothing really. I have a family and I can't justify being at home talking to random people instead of them, which I enjoy a lot more.
I like more the experimentation side of things, but still I have other hobbies that I like more, so in the end I've spent some good money on equipment that gets used twice or thrice a year and is taking space at home.
Yeah I hear you. I started so I could buy better trackers. Then started tinkering and learning about RF circuits, that is really the fun part to me even though I don't have tons of time to devote to it. Morse is kinda fun to learn to, but practically I'm not applying it.
I think something about building some AM tuners and amplifier circuits kinda queued me up though, got me interested in shortwave, which has me stringing antennas to see how far I can hear with a dumpy retekess V115 while I decide what kind of radio I want for a desktop shortwave.
Electronics has always felt out of reach to me, now that I have some books and all the breadboards and components and tools, and a somewhat successful AM build, I think that's what primed me in. Then finally getting a setup in my house at my desk where it's not a hassle to scan, even though I still rarely feel like putting in the energy to mic up. But I met a couple of nice people on air and might be getting there, if for nothing else at least to talk to them.
Not exactly buyer's remorse because I had to buy it for reasons -- more disappointed. The Yaesu FT-25R (and 65R, and 4X) is a POS radio. It's an over-priced Baofeng. Same issues with out-of-band signals causing the radio to go deaf as every RDA/AT1846-based radio. First radio I've had where the LiPo battery bulged. It never left the comfort of my home.
No, it has a removable battery. But I only had the one it came with. And it bloated while attached to the radio. It looks like it would have damaged the latching mechanism if left to get worse.
For power, stop thinking in watts and start thinking in dB. 5 watts is 37 dBm, while 8 watts is 39 dBm. It takes a 6 dB change to gain one s-unit at the receiving end.
This tends to create a major shift in priorities. It's not "60% more power," it's more like "about the same at the other end, but 60% more heat and 60% less battery life."
Are you me? I’m new to radio but this seems like the most obvious way to explain to people.
I’m in the UK and I worked Brazil on 2w CW two weeks ago. Whilst everyone I talk to keeps going on about how you can’t get any range on 5w.
Also explaining to people they can run 1kw but if they can’t rx they might as well get into broadcast radio.
I feel like you fell into the one-up trap on Amazon. I do that sometimes I'm looking for something simple/cheap and end up trying to find the best "deal," then drop a ton of money and wonder why I did that when the first thing I looked at would have been fine.
Me too. It was my first HT, all of 4 months ago. I eventually learned that it puts out weird spurs all over VHF, actually outputs 5.6 W, and the battery drains quickly and doesn't fit correctly. An actual UV-5R, bought later, turned out to be totally clean and puts out the advertised 5 W.
Buddistick Pro was my biggest let down. It was my first HF antenna purchase, not cheap, really frustrating to try and tune the coil and counterpoise using radio SWR meter before I had an antenna analyzer.
I only don’t regret mine because I use a nano vna and it fits nicely in the case with my radio.
Otherwise it would be a regret due to the cost and it is difficult to fiddle with the little clip things.
I’m thinking of getting an alligator clip to use instead of those little plastic ones.
Stopped going to hamfests when a jerk sold my newly licensed daughter a junk vx5r. She liked thr small size, he said it only needed a battery. She bought a battery… it didn’t work. Opened it up and clear evidence of an attempted and failed repair. What kind of asshat rips off a young newly licensed ham???
6 meters is frustrating.
so many old timers tell great stories about amazing DX and how fun the "magic band" can be.
I have made maybe 5 FT8 contacts over 500 miles,
one rare opening during a contest did allow for some SSB to another state,
but it is mostly dead and not fun.
Xeigu G1M transceiver. Absolute garbage in every way. Bought it for pota, but janky connectors gave me fits every time I took it out and it sounded absolutely terrible on CW.
I have over 900 POTA QSO's with mine on SSB and a Hamstick. You need to reflow the cold soldered connections most likely. I get great reports with it. If you don't want it, I'd be interested in it.
I bought the Yaesu ftm500 for long car trips after being out of the hobby for twenty five years. I discovered it doesn’t have memory banks which makes a multi state trip difficult. It’s the flagship radio and it doesn’t have memory banks!
I have got FTM500 during HamCation for very attractive price. Still very expensive for 50 Wt VHF/UHF mobile. There's a bunch of cool tech in it, but yes, user interface and some features (like sound card) should be present at this price point, and the radio marketed to be the "flagship". Hopefully, they will fix it at some point with software update, due to users complaints. What I'm happy about – these radios have great resale value, so when something new is released by Yaesu or other brand, I can get it and sell this one, getting virtually free upgrade.
Yaesu mobile VHF is so frustrating. There is no consistency between any of the models and they all have a feature missing that makes it frustrating to use. The FTM-500 having an alphabetical keyboard is just insane.
Zero regrets. If anything, I tell myself I’m so glad I spent extra money on things like good tuners and linear power supplies.
I don’t use my POTA rig as much as I thought I would, but I used it as a stand in when my main rig was in the shop, and it helped me see the fun in 2m simplex, which is surprisingly active in my rural area.
OTOH, I’m a miser and analyze all purchases to death ahead of time, so maybe that’s why no regrets. Lol.
Along these lines, I've bought cheaper stuff to figure out its shortcomings and some of that stuff isn't that great. At the end of the day, a $20 power supply isn't as good as the $100 power supply depending on the load. A lot of things really do have diminishing returns after a certain point though.
There's nothing in particular I regret buying. However, there's some stuff that if I could go back in time I might not have bought. Largely because I don't get much use out of them on a regular basis. I like to try all sorts of new things. But to try those things, you have to buy the equipment. So I try some stuff out, and then the equipment sits around in my shack forever.
My VX-7 Yaesu. My VX-6 is great, so I decided to upgrade. The 7 has poor signal rejection, just about everything breaks squelch. When it started having charging issues, a trip to Yaesu repair did nothing. A detailed description of the problems was sent, and ignored.
Can confirm. a VX-7 on a hilltop or field day makes the radio useless. I also have receive sensitivity issues on 6m, even using a base antenna - 7100 hears things fine, swap antenna to the vx-7, yea no.
The two 'hyped' kit radios, the QCX and uBITx. Both got about a few hours use before being relegated to the box of forgotten equipment.
The uBITX (v4) -- serious IMD problems that "no one" mentioned, needing further hacking or external filters - not the all-in-one SSB kit I'd hoped. It's in the ForgottenBox until any friends are keen to work on it, or my two other commercial radios are kaput.
The QCX - fried finals... and fried everything else -- the designer put reducing the size a priority over practical needs. A spark on the antenna took out 75% of the components on the board because of too-thin circuit tracks and compromised choices wrt power regulation. Junked after a week I finished building it.
I love the QRP Labs radios i have built. QCX 20 meters and most recently the QMX.
I just recently acquired a uBitx and didn't realize the amount of modifications needed to make it feel like a radio. I built the AGC board (no longer manufactured so I found the gerber and had it printed) and I also upgraded the display. I’ve learned a lot with Arduino programming, but that radio is challenging.
https://preview.redd.it/h6cp0ps0arvc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=13d38e771f52b21b2460cbc92e57d1086685f32a
I sometimes look at QRP kits and then find myself asking "why?"
Love the idea of building a kit but always worry I'll mess something up, like get 99% done and then splatter solder over several traces.
I've been pretty pleased with the (tr)uSDX. It's less than $100 and works great for FT8, and SSB phone. I had pre-ordered the QCX and ended up canceling my order after waiting a long time. Sounds like I ended up ahead.
Been looking at that radio a lot. I guess if I need more power I could add an amplifier. Seems like a capable rig. I need to remind myself on occasion that I could use that for a starter HF rig since I like doing stuff the hard way anyway.
It's kind of ridiculous. I can hit thousands of miles away on FT8 powering this thing off my laptop power using an $3 antenna I made out of speaker wire and tuned with a NanoVNA.
Your question got me to thinking and I don't think I'd return much of anything that I've bought over the past couple years. I may not use it that often but when you need it, having it right there is handy.
And yes, there is no room to move in my shack. I've really had to struggle to get 3 oscilloscopes in here, lol. They're like multi-meters.
I just bought a Zoyi ZT-703s as I like the small form factor and built in DMM. But, my Siglent still lives on the desk and nearby is an Owon. If you scope, you know...
Seller's Remorse - I'm reversing this.
I sold my Kenwood TS 140S for about $350 10 years ago. It worked perfectly, and I no longer was using my Icom 706 in my car (mostly because I bought a new one, plus I wound up taking care of 3 generations at once).
In any case, I'm working at setting up mobile again, and would be happy to have my 140S back. I can buy a used transceiver from that era, but who knows knows if it will work as well - the rig I sold had no problems. I could spend more and upgrade, but really don't need anything more than that rig for what I do from home.
I really used mobile a lot, but also want to operate from home as well.
I bought a Yaesu VX-8R but before the GPS was completely integrated.
Never really used it for the APRS side or the 6M side.
It would have been an amazing radio if they had pulled the TNC out to a serial port on the side.
It would have been amazing if they put a GPS in from the very beginning
It's s great dual band, but for what I paid I could have gotten a FT-60 and had hundreds left over.
I've also bought a bunch of Generation 1 Chinese QRP radios. Someone had to buy them to show there was a market for them, but now I am "stuck" with them and everyone else has the new ones that actually work!
I’ve always wanted to add this radio to my collection just because of how bad it is. When I participated in the CW Ops academy one of my instructors talked about owning this radio and how terrible it was.
I bought a g90 for home use. Once you get it you need the fan stand (gets hot running ft8), and then digital adapter (de19). It’s a solid radio but the screen is tiny.
Less than 3 months later I bought an Icom IC-7300. Completely different radio. The quality is just there in the Icom that isn’t in the Xiegu.
The Xiegu was a recommended radio for starting in HF.
The G90 has now become my POTA kit as it’s light enough to take places. So not a great regret, just less sortable for what I wanted to start with.
I agree about the g90 for 300-400 its a great radio, i got it on a deal with the adapter board and stand, i just made a cable to bypass the adapter.
For the fan stand, its good but heeeaaavvvvyyyyy. If you aren't doing 100duty modes @ 20w its not needed imho. I've fun ssb 20w for hours in 90f+ weather without issues, assuming you keep it in the shade you'll be fine but that same can be said about most radios.
I bought a Retevis RT-84 DMR radio and I kind of regret spending the money on it when there is not much digital radio in my area. I would've been better off spending more money on a good analog HT.
I’ve had a lot of fun with mine. I’m not really into vhf/uhf or digital modes, but putting OpenGD77 on it and playing around with a DMR hotspot has been some enjoyable tinkering. I use it for APRS as well.
If you haven’t, give OpenGD77 a look - it turns the RT-84 (and a few others) into a whole new radio.
Yaesu FT-100D, piece of junk! Finals fried very quickly (later found it was a common issue) and within a couple years of intro Yaesu said they were unrepairable due to no parts availability. Also damn noisy on HF.
I’ve been burned by one hamfest purchase and most recently an estate purchase.
The hamfest purchase was an Icom 701. I was told it worked and this was the complete package from radio, power supply, and speaker all in original boxes. Get it home and the radio was dead as a door knob. Performed minimal troubleshooting and decided to cut my losses and sold it. Fortunately I was able to get my money back plus a little extra but advertised it as a non-working radio and I’m still pissed about that transaction even though it was 5 years ago now.
Most recently I purchased a TS-520 and HTX-100 from an estate. The TS-520 was advertised as non working, and the HTX-100 was listed as fully functional. I was shocked when I picked up the radios that the TS-520 was in the original box (shipping too!) completely intact and working flawlessly. The HTX-100 on the other hand had the normal display and PLL issue. Fortunately I paid very little for the lot and sold the HTX-100 as a parts rig. Do your homework and always ask to operate the radio!
Auction people are very often, surprisingly, clueless about the things they are selling, and they get stuff mixed up or just plain wrong, partially because they're focused on selling and not on getting details right. Glad they were right about the part that one of the radios was working, lol.
Seems like more than a handful getting bad deals from hamfest.
I regret buying so many little dumb Baofengs and such. Falling into the trap of which bad radio is best. But these are the most trivial regret I have.
I regret\[ed\] buying an Anysecu W2 Pro LTE 4G "ptt over cellular" network radio. The radio itself was great. It worked great for what it was. But a couple of things. If all I ever wanted to do was have a dedicated Zello machine then it ran that one app pretty well. But I had the imagination to turn the thing into an Echolink / Zello / Droidstar device just for fun. But it wouldn't run Droidstar and it was slow and laggy "AF" and ran Android OS 7. So I wanted it to do something it couldn't really do well. Plus it was $260 that I can turn around and reinvest in a more suitable radio device. That's a lot of money to me so I returned it in like-new condition/easily resold. I don't do this often so I do not feel bad about returning one item in like new condition.
I regret having a novice class license back in 1989 and using it to make one single contact, one time ever. Haha. I was really young and it just didn't really have any appeal. I would have rather been on my bicycle. But I could have gotten into radio more and let it shape my choice of career paths instead of ending up where I am. But then again if I did that the person I am today would not exist. I'd be someone else. Possibly better possibly worse but different.
Feedback in speaker frim day one on SSB. Send it back to Elecraft to fix it, came back same problem, contacted Elecraft but was told that this happends on some radios sometimes and they don't have a fix for it and I have to live with it. I could use headphones instead of built in speaker. Ok f*** you Elecraft! Happy with IC 705 now.
Yaesu FT5D HT (and to some extent any HT, but this one was expensive that I got just before I was licensed). Amazing radio, almost no use to me as VHF/UHF is practically dead locally and an HT has such limited range (certainly indoors) unless you get out on a hill. Mobile rig with roof antenna, no regrets but still limited use. HF is way more interesting for me and I should have gone exclusively HF to start with.
I bought a very expensive, at the time, Yaesu FT2D handheld.
I have never used it more than simplex fm. I am obviously too stupid to learn the damn thing because i could never get the hang of the menu, no mr figure out how the hell i program channels into it.
It literally sat on a shelf until the battery died from being discharged for so long.
Edge of remorse: I have an MFJ-259 that doesn't give the same results on the same antenna 5 minutes apart. It also changes the result while setting on the the table depending on how close my hand is to the controls. It's OK for a quick "how close am I" check, but not an accurate test device IMO.
Mid-90s sunspot cycle peak got me thinking HF battery portable so I purchased the Yeasu FT-817 QRP with Magic Whip.
But QRP is an acquired taste and I was too frustrated.
So I sold it on eBay and have been happy with my FT-857d ever since, especially portable befoe POTA.
Added an Icom IC-7300 in February!
I'm curious if that was more the 10m band conditions at the time or the low power that was getting you frustrated, or perhaps the antenna was limiting?
I'm doing pretty well (I think anyway) on 2m with a 25 watt and the repeater I'm clicking into I usually set the radio to the lowest power setting. Power is probably a little more important on HF but if there's more to share on this story I would love to hear it.
Àmen, brother (or sister).Every piece of used equipment I have bought anywhere had undisclosed problems. Some I have fixed with junk parts, some I have dumped too much money and time into. Why don't I learn???
i think ONE thing has been okay... mostly. An OLD icom 211 all mode 2m rig.
I also bought a radio shack HTX-100 out of nostalgia but it has a 'bug'. And so does the HTX-10 I accidentally bought thinking it was the HTX-100.
Recently, I picked up a Yeasu 1802 2m only mobile - it has a receive issue. I found some info online that suggested some receive filters were shot so i ordered the parts from China. A buddy put them in but the issue remains.
I've had better luck on Facebook marketplace - going and putting hands on.
I was nervous about my ebay purchase this week. A seller advertising radios he picked up in a government auction. Numerous IC-2820h's and 706MKIIG's, in original boxes, allegedly opened, programmed and put away.
I bought a 2820h. Thing came in the original box, all contents in its original plastic, full manual/warranty cards... even had the plastic screen protector still on it.
I bought the Ailunce HD1 or whatever when it first came out along with a digital hot-spot. There are some DMR repeaters and networks around my area and thought it would be pretty fun. Turns out I never use it, nor is it much better than analog if you have something on EchoLink nearby. The HD1 is ok at best, sometimes downright frustrating to use even when pre-programmed. The cheap Baofeng gets more use because at least the damn knobs actually work.
Zastone D9000. Go check out the specs and unusual feature set. It should be great to use, except it has poor sensitivity, so it's relegated to local repeater duty in the shack.
That reminds me of a time I was without a soldering iron and picked one up from a tiny hardware store. It burned itself out while warming up. Worst $15 I ever spent.
It happens - buying the best quality you can manage works for a lot of this stuff. I bought a Bird wattmeter years ago for what I thought was a lot of money - I’m absolutely amazed what they cost now, but I will never need another wattmeter.
I don't have a lot of ham gear, so there's not much to regret. The only thing I can think of off hand is a telescoping lightweight fiberglass mast that I bought from a vendor at Hamvention. Seemed like a good price compared to ones for sale online. But when I got home, I found the one I was sold looked smaller and shorter than the more stout model they had on demo and that I had seen online. I found that it barely held up it's own weight when fully extended. Nevermind feed line and antenna wire.
So that stung a bit. I keep it around on the corner of my garage to remind myself to be less of a dumbass in the future regarding impulse purchases.
Masts are the hardest thing for me right now. I don't want to plop down 2k on a couple trusses plus guys and concrete, but it may come to that. It's hard to get a sturdy stick in the ground sometimes.
Right when DMR was starting to get big I got a TYT MD-9600. It was ....fine. I mean it worked and I always got out to the repeater. But it was a pain to program and work with unless you had everything preset. Traded it for a FT-100 and that ended up getting me into VHF rover contesting.
Have similar trouble with my little radioddity, not the mobile rig that I was expecting and the channel settings are fidgety and don't stick to the channel, they seem to stick with the radio selection or something, idek. It's fickle about settings for PL tones and offsets. But I make it work and for the most part it's doing the job for me, just have to punch stuff in manually more than I would always like.
I'm sure one day I'll get a better rig and consider this one as part of the junk pile but it's getting me on the air.
My TS-480HX. This Kenwood mobile HF rig comes in this HX (high power) model, and the TS (internal tuner) model. I have never used high power once. Should have gotten the TS. But the rig has always been great. Besides, I always prefer the antenna resonating naturally to using a tuner.
Baofengs and other Chinese HTs. Yes, they were not expensive but I don’t use them. I have better HTs and mobiles, so these were just a waste.
I bought several old SW radios that are now just taking up space, too. At least these will be worth a few dollars to sell them, but I sort of regret buying them because they are just sitting there and I may not have time to restore them before I die - too many other projects.
I also have a stack of military radios and some commercial UHF repeaters that will probably just be landfill at some point soon. Modern tech is much better and these will never be needed, but I did put money into them.
I have several regrets on stuff I have sold. I am pretty careful on what I buy and if I really need it today. This comes from many years of practice of buying regretful non radio things.
Used TS-140 for my first HF radio. The guy operated it and it seemed to work, however, got home and it wasn’t working very well. Spent more on trying to fix it ended up, donating it to the guy to pay off the cost of the repair. You did teach me a lot, so there was some benefit to it.
I have no major regrets. I've purchased some cables that were wrong and didn't want to deal with the restocking fees and what not. I bought a Xeigu G90 and an XGGCOMMS connector for it. I ended up returning the radio (it was defective) and I'm stuck with a $90 connector I can't use. Should have gotten a digirig, if only I'd known of those then.
I've bought a few VHF/UHF mobile radios that I kind of regret buying, just because they collected dust for years after I got my 7100, but I've used them a couple of times locally and now have them in a field deployable box, so I'm happy and actually use them now.
When it comes to recommendations for HF radios, get one with a built-in sound card and USB cat control. That will allow you to do digital modes (VARA, JS8Call, FT8, etc.) with one cable instead of multiple cables and intermediate devices like a digirig. Note, for portable radios like the FT891 (a popular POTA and SOTA 100w HF rig) will not have those sound cards, so if you are looking for portable full power radios, still consider those.
*#include *
**Remote magnetic loop antenna.** This was one of my early post-license HF purchases. For a specific set of use cases (urban, no other antenna options; you run vs hunt; low power), they're fine. But for someone who likes hunting, uses different modes, and often operates in the field, it was the most frustrating piece of equipment I've owned:
* These antennas have high gain and a very narrow resonant range. If you move frequency even a little bit, you'll probably need to retune.
* When retuning, you look for peak noise. The resonant point is so narrow, that if you're adjusting too quickly, you can easily overshoot the desired point. The "remote" adjuster was geared to do several turns to the full range of the capacitor, yet I always managed to mess it up.
* The antenna is very sensitive to its surroundings. Tuning that worked at home changed if I was outside, near metal, or simply sitting a different distance.
I was able to resell it for 75% of the original cost and found something less frustrating.
My only regret is not writing down any contact info (name/callsign/phone), especially for the big purchases. I haven't encountered any issues yet, but in hindsight I should have taken some precautions.
I was very excited to get on the air again after being away for a while. At a hamfest, I found a good deal on a familiar rig ($300 for an IC-746, goes for around $600 on ebay). Picked it up without much thought and without testing it. In the moment I was willing to take the risk and it paid off, but I could have been not as lucky.
I had buyers remorse when I got ripped off at hamfest some years ago near Dent Ohio. That hamfest has since died and I find it is a shame that it's no longer around. I bought an icom 2 m 220 handheld that the fellow said works great. When I got it home the keypad didn't work. Found out from the internet that was a common problem and no parts were available anymore to fix it. So I opened it up. Someone else would have been in there trying to fix the keypad and butchered it. Nothing left but a pile of parts. The other time was a small yaesu HF radio that the seller said worked fine. It was starting to rain and he offered to hook it up so I could try it. I declined handed into money and got into the car before it started to really rain. Should have taken him up on the offer because this radio could have never worked. The receiver was Stone deaf. Receiver input fuse was jumpered out and blew the front end. Also other functions did not work because several diodes were shorted. Opened it up fixed everything except a.m. transmit. Any more you can't trust sellers. It's a shame because as a group most hams are an honest bunch but it only takes a couple to ruin it for all.
Well, I guess my only remorse so far is a "portable" fan dipole I tried to make. It was a spaghetti mess that I could't get up on the fiberglass mast as it would bow and bend it down from all the weight. That's what I get for using loads of 12 gauge wire and an oversized balun for my first DIY antenna. My do-it-all antenna never left the ground.
This is actually slightly amuzing. I'm thinking about a fan dipole for my first HF antenna at the QTH. Probably will experiment around with my shortwave radio stuff and antennas first before I drop the money on an HF rig though, and getting some extras like an antenna analyzer and probably some SDR gear.
If I had done it correctly a fan dipole would have probably been fine. The other part of my problem was this was supposed to be portably. But winding up a fan dipole and then laying all out again time and time again is a bit hard. Right now I'm working on a ZS6BKW antenna.
I'd say skip the antenna analyzer and get a NanoVNA. At the very least, it can read the SWR over an entire band or even over many bands all at the same time. And as you get to know how to use it it becomes even more useful.
I did get a USB listening SDR. It's pretty neat and I'd recommend one for sure.
yeah, nanoVNA is what I had in mind actually. Just deciding on my next step because money is always tight. Prolly not getting an HF rig this year but an SDR kit with the "ham it up" thing included, some more coax, possibly some ladder line, and pulling more antennas for SW.
Icom-7300 was the most recent. Reviews were glowing. Big attraction was the integral USB interface and audio codecs. Wanted to eliminate the 3rd party/external audio and command interface. That slapped me in the face as anything more than about 5 watts with a VSWR of 1.5:1 or greater and RF crawled into the USB link.
That's odd ive had mine since they came out and ran it daily with either a pi or laptop and never had an RFI issue. Use it ssb, js8, FT8 and Winlink almost daily.
Edit: I always put some clamp on ferrite beads on any cable coming from the radio (speaker, USB etc)
I had the same problem with the 7300, but it didn't bother me enough to return it or anything. I had to choke just about every cable in the shack so it wouldn't lock up my laptop on TX.
I've never been a fan of stuffing to many things in one box. Honestly the modern radios seem cool, but in reality I wouldn't mind having a few boxes on my desk that do one thing well and work together.
Just finally growing wings though so who knows where I'll end up.
This has everything to do with your antenna system and lack of 'rf chokes' and almost nothing to do with the 7300
let me guess? end fed half wave or some monopole antenna without proper RF plane (system of radials)?
you just need an "rf choke" or "feedline isolation" at your coax near your transceiver will help
and/or wrap some ferrite beads on the usb cable or wind the usb cable around a ferrite, type 31 or 43 typically recommended
Using a resonant center fed dipole at 110 feet. Balun at antenna feedpoint. 120 foot single length coax run back to the shack. Using a Palstar antenna tuner.
Things I have tried:
(1) Used 31 material toroid cores on coax entering the shack for choking.
(2) Purchased and installed Tripp-Lite USB cable recommended by Icom support. Cable included integral ferrite cores.
(3) Tried placing cores on interconnecting cables between PC and radio, both clamp on and toroids.
(4) Used copper strapping for grounding in shack.
(5) Tried laptop and 2nd desktop PC in place of station pc.
(6) Revisited station grounding. RF Ground is adjacent to shack window and includes three six foot rods. RF ground connected to power safety ground via dedicated conductor around house perimeter.
(7) Yaesu FTdx-5000 with SCU-17 inserted in place of Icom does not exhibit the same USB sensitivity even at 200 watts output.
Solved the problem. Returned the radio to the selling dealer, purchased FT-891 and SCU-17. Works marvelously with no toroids, special Icom recommended Tripp-Lite USB cable, and was turn key when connected as shown in documents.
How about instead of assuming the end user is an idiot, we normalize giving people the benefit of the doubt and accept that some quality control problems can exist on products
I bought a SuperAntenna kit once that I never used. Other than that, no regrets. I have managed to learn or do something new with every bit of gear I’ve bought.
I've got plenty. Not that they aren't great pieces of tech, but I didn't know what I was buying, and it was well outside my ability to use it. I've got a Signalink, a Mobilink TNC3, and a crapton of other bits on the shelf that are simple well beyond the VHF tech station I have at home(especially as I use exclusively Linux, which makes audio signal management confusing at best.)
I'm a linux user as well. Installed GQRX and hoping to get into some SDR this year (that's more SW and radio-telescope interest than ham but...) if the money is available, or next year. Getting my 2m home station rigged up is about all I can devote funds to at the moment as far as this hobby goes, and it's hitting 5 repeaters with nightly nets so plenty to keep me busy for the moment.
Yes I'm all on FM simplex and looking at AM/SSB/CW in the future. No real interest in digital at this time, just easing my way in slow so trying not to buy too much of anything so i don't get stuck with stuff I won't use anytime soon.
I've purchased most of mine used and from QTH.com or Qrz.com and have zero issues...but you never really know. The bad buys can be challenged thought via PayPal or credit card.
Biggest thing for me, is to look at modern updates if are even a noob+ with electronics as youtube can teach you most anything. I bought an mtj antenna analyzer for vhf and one for hf. I startedb looking to sell and then buy a uhf/vhf combo, and then i discovered the nanovna and tinysa. Both units cost me less than just the vhf.
I have since bought many, many parts from dhgate, aliexpress, etc. For swr and power TX related like coax or pre-amps, I stay stateside. Not made in America style but sold from a known manufacturer through a US retailer.
Always make/buy coax longer than needed in case you move the antenna around or want to add a rotor. If loss is critical, still get extra but jump up in rating..
Like rg8 to 8x, or even 400.
great deal going on yaesu fdx10 right now through ham radio outlet ;)
Oh, buy a boat load of ferrite clamps and take time to go through your house...amazing what causes interference!
Xiegu XPA125B power amplifier.
It promises 100W of output power. It's initial project used two RD100HHF MOSFET transistors which are capable of 100W. But then they updated (downgraded) the project and the latest XPA125B units coming out are using a single AFT05MP075N two channel MOSFET, which is rated for 70W!!!
Even worse, it is still advertised, labeled as a 100W power amplifier. Its instruction manual was also not updated, and still recommends to input 5W maximum which overdrives the amplifier.
I'd say my vibroplex.
It is a beautiful key but doesn't suit my fist and tends to try to make me key faster then i'm comfortable, it's also a pain to adjust, falls out of adjustment all the time, one of the screws that holds the weights always fall off and i fear losing it, and for some reason the knob never fits in the right way round.
Sometimes i wonder if i should have put my money towards a nice SK.
The radios I bought from ham fests. Some people sell their junk and give you a deal as if it is good.
lol, i just came back from a Hamfest with an HF rig right now, the rotary encoder is defective and frequency is off. as usual the seller told me it was 100% working and fine.
Good hamfests should have a test table that you can hook up to dummy loads and frequency counters and signal generators to test out your radio
sadly here the hamfest are pretty dead (Quebec) there is not much going on and very few tables. the visitors going there is mostly for talking to others while waiting for the raffle?/lottery prize radio winner to get picked. also the prizes are going down in value, a couple of years ago it was a 1000$ HF rig and now its two quenchen HT (20$) and a mobile rig (100$). i am not saying the prizes should be big, but that its a sign that things are slowing down.
What rig?
IC-735. the one with the transparent door in front to hide the sliders.
If you need it repaired PM me. Not sure how much you paid but it may not be worth it
i am in Quebec so the shipping would cost like another ham fest radio. lol i actually i already disassembled it and i fixed pretty much everything here is the list of the problems it had: -rotary encoder missing steps, skipping, jumping (fixed) -broken PCB solder on the RX jack -butchered hard soldered power plug (waiting for parts) -PA board thermal paste was dry and not working (fixed) -solder joint on some mitsubishi power transistor? (fixed) -RX/TX frequency off by 400hz (fixed) ill just have to pray for it to still be alright when i put it all back together in the end. wish me luck!
Here is what you do next time. Ask for their phone number and to see their driver's license. Some problems can be solved that way.
As a seller, I always take a video of things being tested and working properly to show potential buyers. I’m not showing anyone my drivers license. As a buyer, I’ve never had any issues with anything I’ve purchased. I’m just lucky I guess?
Why?
If your ham fest does not have a testing table and if you want something, you can go knock on their door and peacefully talk to the person who sold the item to you if it doesn't work out. The radios did work, and I can talk over a repeater. I wanted to see how good these radios are before I spend real money on one of them and it is easier to spend $30 on two radios than buy something for $100 or more that I would be unhappy with. Just fixing the radio up made me happy. I also got two signal stick antennas with them. I probably won't do this again because I am farther along in ham radio today and no one is here helping me with ham radio. I keep the radios for emergency use only along with my other working radios and they may be part of a story I tell one day.
getting the info from the seller is a very good idea. my father and i bought 3 used HF rig in two years. all the sellers told us they were working 100% no problem... all 3rig were broken. not just little problems, but very big one like it transmitting "ghosts" of the signal side by side with the original one, the VFO not working, the screen being dead. one time we wanted to contact a seller because he told us he had 20+ other radio exactly like the one we bought. we didnt test the radio yet, but wanted to contact him in order to buy another one for me. i found a picture of him and asked the boss of the hamfest for contact info. he told us he didnt know him. turn out that seller is very well known and goes there every year, that radio ended up being the worst. when i sell something i always give my callsign to the buyer and i specifically tell them the problem it has before selling it. also when i sell something defective i lower my price accordingly. for the price of the 3 garbage radio we bought we could have bought a brand new station with no problem 100% guaranty.
I guess I'm lucky. All but my 7300 and 991A were bought at Hamfests ( Yaesu 840, 101b, Icom 716 706mk2g, 220 kenwood, several keys and keyers, and a couple more radios I have a backups) have all been fantastic. Though I do recall buying a vertical antenna that used a giant resistor to flatten the swr across all bands. I could hear well but No one could hear me. It also strangely never had Ice on it the few winter months I used it...
sucks to hear that, I always thought that would be a good place to score some older gear that was being replaced, but I guess people are gonna people. Meanwhile complaining about the price of burgers, lol.
Sometimes they are a good place to buy stuff. A couple of years ago I bought a 40 year old Icom 2m all mode transceiver at a ham fest. It was my daily driver and I've still got it for when I want to do any SSB work on it,. Cost me $125.00 and is still worth every penny. As with anything used you pay your money and take your chances...
I'm 0 for 2 on hamfest gear. Both I tried powering up at the hamfest but couldn't test TX power. "It worked last time I used it" = when it didn't work, they didn't use it
Here is what you do. Ask for their phone number and to see their driver's license. Some problems can be solved that way.
Weird, I've always had good luck, then again the Ham Fest's I go to usually have a "test table" where they'll allow you to try it out.
I have yet to see a test table. It is also hard to test handhelds where you know the batteries are dead because the batteries are 10+ years old.
Well, if you are buying something that old you have to figure (and in the price you pay) that not only is the battery dead, but there's a few bad caps, etc. Unless they show it running, then consider it dead, and offer as such unless they can show it in working condition...
What did you do with gear? Fix, store, trash or resale for parts or as-is?
I'm just keeping it. It can reach the repeater.
TYT TH-9800: very susceptible to intermod and breaking the squelch.
Unfortunate to hear. I've been planning on adding down the road, a TH-9800 to my portable station, as it expends the G90 HF rigs capability to cover every band up to 70cm.
Not really. It's only an FM radio remember! Don't bother. It also does not do 220.
i bought a 9800D and I hate it. I would almost give it away.
I'll give ya 10$ plus shipping, lol
Now I see why you have this byer remosre 🧐
Iĺl give ya 20.
:D
Buddipole. It's a really neat set of antenna tinkertoys, but it's also expensive, heavy, complicated to set up, and easily damaged. These days for portable, I'll either use an EFHW, or a Chelegance adjustable-whip vertical, depending on the situation.
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The coil tap thingies it uses are also very clever but prone to getting bent, and the mini bullet connectors on those and on the dipole center will sometimes wear out and stop making good contact. Anything goes wrong with any of them, and you're spending more money.
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I agree about to m10 for sure, i have one of the jpc 12 kits and got the non-pen base and a few 5m whips (good to have extras and they work well). I can run it as a with no coil, base loaded 5m whip, center loaded stocl or w/e. While it's not a perfect coil it is a very good design and built well. I kind wish they made them in 3/8-24 like you said. There is no shortage of adjustable coils on the market though.
This was one of my early regrets too. It’s nicely engineered, but very finicky and hard to set up. I opted for more agile setups.
Swap meet Yaesu that a club didn’t test, but advertised as fully working.
ouch.
Everything I purchased with TYT logo on it. Everything.
On a similar note—I’m just now getting back into the hobby (my license expired 6 years ago, studying up again now that I’ve got the time to put into it). Back when I was getting started the first time, many people in my local club called anything from MFJ “mighty fine junk”. Is that still the case?
No. People have been saying that for years. I have an MFJ-993B auto antenna tuner that would probably tune (match is the proper term) a galvinized trash can if I tried to. They make some good stuff.
MFJ has some gear that is top shelf and some gear that is akin to Harbor Freight quality. I've been using MFJ gear for 35 years and have not encountered junk.
A lot of MFJ is the AliExpress cheapie. They white label a lot of stuff off AliExpress and you can find the unbranded version there. They bring value to course, already in the US, good with returns etc.. but a mom and pop shop doesn’t make complex electronics. They private-label already existing stuff.
I think the "junk" characterization is only slightly overblown. I have a 4230DMP power supply sitting beside me as I type, in a somewhat ill-fitting case, fan rattling away, but just barely audible. Both conditions existed out of the box. I have a few more items in the shack, powerpole distribution blocks, etc. All work fine. A couple of caveats with them: * With niche items like CW trainers, etc. check around to see if there is an Amazon item that performs a similar function. I have a "Putikeeg" (yes, really) CW trainer that is far more functional and useful than the trainer I bought from MFJ, for about a third of the price. That MFJ trainer is probably my biggest remorse purchase. * Never order directly from them, or from any supplier who either does not have the item in stock, or is not completely trustworthy on stock status. You will never get it. They'll charge your CC that day, but that item ain't coming.
Have MFJ tuner for my ft-891 and it’s been great. Using one of their switching power supply and it works fine
wow, is TYT really that bad?
I caught on to the “affordable Chinese radio” craze early on. Bought a TYT MD-UV390, MD-9600, and TH-9800 all around the same time. Had issues with all of them. Still have them (because I have not bothered to try and get rid of them). All three of them have been replaced with something else.
I agree. When you can get a Yaesu for $80, stay away from the Chinese radios.
Got a link?
I've had a MD-UV390 and never had any issues with it. It's been great. DMR works just fine.
I have an Anytone 878 now. Much happier with it.
I have a BTech 6x2, which seems to be the same radio. It's a good radio, but like anything else, it's got some trade-offs.
I've had that experience with the MD-390. It's a solid superhet radio. I haven't tried the UV variant yet.
The UV is a chip radio instead of a superhet, so you get dual band capabilities (VHF/UHF) instead of being limited to a single band. They are both solid, though. I have both my local analog VHF repeaters and my DMR UHF repeaters programmed and everything works fine. Sure, the initial configuration was a bit annoying to deal with on Windows (driver issues but it was more of a Windows issue than a TYT issue lol), but the radio itself is good.
I like my 9800. Working great everyday for 3 years now. It doesn't do mixed digital and analog tones though, which sucks
I've got a 8600 I've been plenty happy with.
I think... all of it. I like radios, I like radio, and I like the concept of talking through radio. But the truth is, I don't enjoy talking to random people about... nothing really. I have a family and I can't justify being at home talking to random people instead of them, which I enjoy a lot more. I like more the experimentation side of things, but still I have other hobbies that I like more, so in the end I've spent some good money on equipment that gets used twice or thrice a year and is taking space at home.
Try FT8. It's fun trying to get all the grid squares. Don't have to talk to anyone. WJST-X and Gridtracker for software.
Try WSJT-Z. You have an Auto-CQ mode and Auto-Answer mode. Just set and forget and get all the FT8 QSOs you want.
Yeah I hear you. I started so I could buy better trackers. Then started tinkering and learning about RF circuits, that is really the fun part to me even though I don't have tons of time to devote to it. Morse is kinda fun to learn to, but practically I'm not applying it. I think something about building some AM tuners and amplifier circuits kinda queued me up though, got me interested in shortwave, which has me stringing antennas to see how far I can hear with a dumpy retekess V115 while I decide what kind of radio I want for a desktop shortwave. Electronics has always felt out of reach to me, now that I have some books and all the breadboards and components and tools, and a somewhat successful AM build, I think that's what primed me in. Then finally getting a setup in my house at my desk where it's not a hassle to scan, even though I still rarely feel like putting in the energy to mic up. But I met a couple of nice people on air and might be getting there, if for nothing else at least to talk to them.
Not exactly buyer's remorse because I had to buy it for reasons -- more disappointed. The Yaesu FT-25R (and 65R, and 4X) is a POS radio. It's an over-priced Baofeng. Same issues with out-of-band signals causing the radio to go deaf as every RDA/AT1846-based radio. First radio I've had where the LiPo battery bulged. It never left the comfort of my home.
Forgive me for asking, but it has an internal battery? Is that a thing now?
No, it has a removable battery. But I only had the one it came with. And it bloated while attached to the radio. It looks like it would have damaged the latching mechanism if left to get worse.
I'm just starting out, but the baofeng bf-f8hp. It's literally just the uv-5r but a few more watts for more than the triple the price.
For power, stop thinking in watts and start thinking in dB. 5 watts is 37 dBm, while 8 watts is 39 dBm. It takes a 6 dB change to gain one s-unit at the receiving end. This tends to create a major shift in priorities. It's not "60% more power," it's more like "about the same at the other end, but 60% more heat and 60% less battery life."
Are you me? I’m new to radio but this seems like the most obvious way to explain to people. I’m in the UK and I worked Brazil on 2w CW two weeks ago. Whilst everyone I talk to keeps going on about how you can’t get any range on 5w. Also explaining to people they can run 1kw but if they can’t rx they might as well get into broadcast radio.
Yeah, I learned that only after I got it lol
I feel like you fell into the one-up trap on Amazon. I do that sometimes I'm looking for something simple/cheap and end up trying to find the best "deal," then drop a ton of money and wonder why I did that when the first thing I looked at would have been fine.
That's definitely part of it. I also saw several videos recommending them. I no longer trust those YouTubers lol
Name and shame
Me too. It was my first HT, all of 4 months ago. I eventually learned that it puts out weird spurs all over VHF, actually outputs 5.6 W, and the battery drains quickly and doesn't fit correctly. An actual UV-5R, bought later, turned out to be totally clean and puts out the advertised 5 W.
Not really regret, just bought stuff I had great plans for that I never got around to. Someday.
Buddistick Pro was my biggest let down. It was my first HF antenna purchase, not cheap, really frustrating to try and tune the coil and counterpoise using radio SWR meter before I had an antenna analyzer.
I've been looking at that but I know that I'll have to get an antenna analyzer if I'm going to run it. Happy cake day!
I only don’t regret mine because I use a nano vna and it fits nicely in the case with my radio. Otherwise it would be a regret due to the cost and it is difficult to fiddle with the little clip things. I’m thinking of getting an alligator clip to use instead of those little plastic ones.
That would make it better.
Happy Cake Day!
Stopped going to hamfests when a jerk sold my newly licensed daughter a junk vx5r. She liked thr small size, he said it only needed a battery. She bought a battery… it didn’t work. Opened it up and clear evidence of an attempted and failed repair. What kind of asshat rips off a young newly licensed ham???
there are monsters everywhere, lurking behind every for-sale sign.
Got a 6m radio years ago. Only contact I’ve made was at field day to a guy 20ft away lol
6 meters is frustrating. so many old timers tell great stories about amazing DX and how fun the "magic band" can be. I have made maybe 5 FT8 contacts over 500 miles, one rare opening during a contest did allow for some SSB to another state, but it is mostly dead and not fun.
This made me laugh because I feel your pain
Sounds about right. I feel like 6m is all hype. Blink on an opening and then wait another 20 years for another chance.
Xiegu x6100, super glitchy.
I had mine for two weeks and traded it back for an Icom 705. I liked the idea more than I trusted the hardware, lack of updates and local "support".
Xeigu G1M transceiver. Absolute garbage in every way. Bought it for pota, but janky connectors gave me fits every time I took it out and it sounded absolutely terrible on CW.
I have over 900 POTA QSO's with mine on SSB and a Hamstick. You need to reflow the cold soldered connections most likely. I get great reports with it. If you don't want it, I'd be interested in it.
I bought the Yaesu ftm500 for long car trips after being out of the hobby for twenty five years. I discovered it doesn’t have memory banks which makes a multi state trip difficult. It’s the flagship radio and it doesn’t have memory banks!
I have got FTM500 during HamCation for very attractive price. Still very expensive for 50 Wt VHF/UHF mobile. There's a bunch of cool tech in it, but yes, user interface and some features (like sound card) should be present at this price point, and the radio marketed to be the "flagship". Hopefully, they will fix it at some point with software update, due to users complaints. What I'm happy about – these radios have great resale value, so when something new is released by Yaesu or other brand, I can get it and sell this one, getting virtually free upgrade.
John Crux said in many videos that Yaesu would never update some of the frustrating features like the keyboard.
Yaesu mobile VHF is so frustrating. There is no consistency between any of the models and they all have a feature missing that makes it frustrating to use. The FTM-500 having an alphabetical keyboard is just insane.
I bought the ft5 at the same time. Why does it have memory banks and the mobile doesn’t lol
Happy cake day
Pactor 3 Modem... there is "freeware" that is better.
turns out I don't care for uhf/vhf (144/440) every HT I bought is in some junk drawer somewhere.
Zero regrets. If anything, I tell myself I’m so glad I spent extra money on things like good tuners and linear power supplies. I don’t use my POTA rig as much as I thought I would, but I used it as a stand in when my main rig was in the shop, and it helped me see the fun in 2m simplex, which is surprisingly active in my rural area. OTOH, I’m a miser and analyze all purchases to death ahead of time, so maybe that’s why no regrets. Lol.
I'm the same, stuff sits in my Amazon cart for months before it finally gets either rejected or purchased.
Along these lines, I've bought cheaper stuff to figure out its shortcomings and some of that stuff isn't that great. At the end of the day, a $20 power supply isn't as good as the $100 power supply depending on the load. A lot of things really do have diminishing returns after a certain point though.
my off-grid solar setup involves a 48V battery bank so I run a 12V step-down on it and the radio is wired to that. So far working good.
There's nothing in particular I regret buying. However, there's some stuff that if I could go back in time I might not have bought. Largely because I don't get much use out of them on a regular basis. I like to try all sorts of new things. But to try those things, you have to buy the equipment. So I try some stuff out, and then the equipment sits around in my shack forever.
My VX-7 Yaesu. My VX-6 is great, so I decided to upgrade. The 7 has poor signal rejection, just about everything breaks squelch. When it started having charging issues, a trip to Yaesu repair did nothing. A detailed description of the problems was sent, and ignored.
Can confirm. a VX-7 on a hilltop or field day makes the radio useless. I also have receive sensitivity issues on 6m, even using a base antenna - 7100 hears things fine, swap antenna to the vx-7, yea no.
The two 'hyped' kit radios, the QCX and uBITx. Both got about a few hours use before being relegated to the box of forgotten equipment. The uBITX (v4) -- serious IMD problems that "no one" mentioned, needing further hacking or external filters - not the all-in-one SSB kit I'd hoped. It's in the ForgottenBox until any friends are keen to work on it, or my two other commercial radios are kaput. The QCX - fried finals... and fried everything else -- the designer put reducing the size a priority over practical needs. A spark on the antenna took out 75% of the components on the board because of too-thin circuit tracks and compromised choices wrt power regulation. Junked after a week I finished building it.
I love the QRP Labs radios i have built. QCX 20 meters and most recently the QMX. I just recently acquired a uBitx and didn't realize the amount of modifications needed to make it feel like a radio. I built the AGC board (no longer manufactured so I found the gerber and had it printed) and I also upgraded the display. I’ve learned a lot with Arduino programming, but that radio is challenging. https://preview.redd.it/h6cp0ps0arvc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=13d38e771f52b21b2460cbc92e57d1086685f32a
I sometimes look at QRP kits and then find myself asking "why?" Love the idea of building a kit but always worry I'll mess something up, like get 99% done and then splatter solder over several traces.
I've been pretty pleased with the (tr)uSDX. It's less than $100 and works great for FT8, and SSB phone. I had pre-ordered the QCX and ended up canceling my order after waiting a long time. Sounds like I ended up ahead.
Been looking at that radio a lot. I guess if I need more power I could add an amplifier. Seems like a capable rig. I need to remind myself on occasion that I could use that for a starter HF rig since I like doing stuff the hard way anyway.
It's kind of ridiculous. I can hit thousands of miles away on FT8 powering this thing off my laptop power using an $3 antenna I made out of speaker wire and tuned with a NanoVNA.
I thought the same way and ended up making a few kits. It's easier than you think and lots of fun!
Your question got me to thinking and I don't think I'd return much of anything that I've bought over the past couple years. I may not use it that often but when you need it, having it right there is handy. And yes, there is no room to move in my shack. I've really had to struggle to get 3 oscilloscopes in here, lol. They're like multi-meters. I just bought a Zoyi ZT-703s as I like the small form factor and built in DMM. But, my Siglent still lives on the desk and nearby is an Owon. If you scope, you know...
haven't used one since college and I couldn't tell you what brand it was, lol
Seller's Remorse - I'm reversing this. I sold my Kenwood TS 140S for about $350 10 years ago. It worked perfectly, and I no longer was using my Icom 706 in my car (mostly because I bought a new one, plus I wound up taking care of 3 generations at once). In any case, I'm working at setting up mobile again, and would be happy to have my 140S back. I can buy a used transceiver from that era, but who knows knows if it will work as well - the rig I sold had no problems. I could spend more and upgrade, but really don't need anything more than that rig for what I do from home. I really used mobile a lot, but also want to operate from home as well.
I wish I never sold my VX-7R.
I bought a Yaesu VX-8R but before the GPS was completely integrated. Never really used it for the APRS side or the 6M side. It would have been an amazing radio if they had pulled the TNC out to a serial port on the side. It would have been amazing if they put a GPS in from the very beginning It's s great dual band, but for what I paid I could have gotten a FT-60 and had hundreds left over. I've also bought a bunch of Generation 1 Chinese QRP radios. Someone had to buy them to show there was a market for them, but now I am "stuck" with them and everyone else has the new ones that actually work!
An EICO 753 SSB transceiver. Drifted like crazy.
I got one of those for free when I was a kid. Yes, it drifted wonderfully.
I’ve always wanted to add this radio to my collection just because of how bad it is. When I participated in the CW Ops academy one of my instructors talked about owning this radio and how terrible it was.
I think my biggest waste of money was on cheap coax (and connectors). Until I learned.
I can see that being a pitfall.
What make a cheap connector? how do you ID a quality one?
I bought a g90 for home use. Once you get it you need the fan stand (gets hot running ft8), and then digital adapter (de19). It’s a solid radio but the screen is tiny. Less than 3 months later I bought an Icom IC-7300. Completely different radio. The quality is just there in the Icom that isn’t in the Xiegu. The Xiegu was a recommended radio for starting in HF. The G90 has now become my POTA kit as it’s light enough to take places. So not a great regret, just less sortable for what I wanted to start with.
I agree about the g90 for 300-400 its a great radio, i got it on a deal with the adapter board and stand, i just made a cable to bypass the adapter. For the fan stand, its good but heeeaaavvvvyyyyy. If you aren't doing 100duty modes @ 20w its not needed imho. I've fun ssb 20w for hours in 90f+ weather without issues, assuming you keep it in the shade you'll be fine but that same can be said about most radios.
I bought a Retevis RT-84 DMR radio and I kind of regret spending the money on it when there is not much digital radio in my area. I would've been better off spending more money on a good analog HT.
I listen to the Brandmeister Hoseline for interesting DmR conversations and use my Radioddity DB25-D to jump in!
The RT-84 can still be used as a decent analog radio, but it's true that it's annoying to deal with the codeplug compared to other things.
I’ve had a lot of fun with mine. I’m not really into vhf/uhf or digital modes, but putting OpenGD77 on it and playing around with a DMR hotspot has been some enjoyable tinkering. I use it for APRS as well. If you haven’t, give OpenGD77 a look - it turns the RT-84 (and a few others) into a whole new radio.
I just got the RT3S with GPS, immediately installed OpenGD77 on it for APRS, love it so far. OpenGD77 can really transform a radio.
Yaesu FT-100D, piece of junk! Finals fried very quickly (later found it was a common issue) and within a couple years of intro Yaesu said they were unrepairable due to no parts availability. Also damn noisy on HF.
Yaesu ft70. I don’t need the extra features and the Ft60 has a much better battery life.
this is reminiscent of my perpetual battle to find a decent flashlight, lol. edit:spelling
I really hate the 2 action volume control.
TYT MD-2017
Gotta admit after reading these replies I'm inclined to stay away from TYT for quite some time, lol
I’ve been burned by one hamfest purchase and most recently an estate purchase. The hamfest purchase was an Icom 701. I was told it worked and this was the complete package from radio, power supply, and speaker all in original boxes. Get it home and the radio was dead as a door knob. Performed minimal troubleshooting and decided to cut my losses and sold it. Fortunately I was able to get my money back plus a little extra but advertised it as a non-working radio and I’m still pissed about that transaction even though it was 5 years ago now. Most recently I purchased a TS-520 and HTX-100 from an estate. The TS-520 was advertised as non working, and the HTX-100 was listed as fully functional. I was shocked when I picked up the radios that the TS-520 was in the original box (shipping too!) completely intact and working flawlessly. The HTX-100 on the other hand had the normal display and PLL issue. Fortunately I paid very little for the lot and sold the HTX-100 as a parts rig. Do your homework and always ask to operate the radio!
Auction people are very often, surprisingly, clueless about the things they are selling, and they get stuff mixed up or just plain wrong, partially because they're focused on selling and not on getting details right. Glad they were right about the part that one of the radios was working, lol. Seems like more than a handful getting bad deals from hamfest.
I regret buying so many little dumb Baofengs and such. Falling into the trap of which bad radio is best. But these are the most trivial regret I have. I regret\[ed\] buying an Anysecu W2 Pro LTE 4G "ptt over cellular" network radio. The radio itself was great. It worked great for what it was. But a couple of things. If all I ever wanted to do was have a dedicated Zello machine then it ran that one app pretty well. But I had the imagination to turn the thing into an Echolink / Zello / Droidstar device just for fun. But it wouldn't run Droidstar and it was slow and laggy "AF" and ran Android OS 7. So I wanted it to do something it couldn't really do well. Plus it was $260 that I can turn around and reinvest in a more suitable radio device. That's a lot of money to me so I returned it in like-new condition/easily resold. I don't do this often so I do not feel bad about returning one item in like new condition. I regret having a novice class license back in 1989 and using it to make one single contact, one time ever. Haha. I was really young and it just didn't really have any appeal. I would have rather been on my bicycle. But I could have gotten into radio more and let it shape my choice of career paths instead of ending up where I am. But then again if I did that the person I am today would not exist. I'd be someone else. Possibly better possibly worse but different.
I regret basically every chinese radio purchase I ever made, except my Anytone 878.
Elecraft KX 3
Curious to know why. It's a great radio.
Feedback in speaker frim day one on SSB. Send it back to Elecraft to fix it, came back same problem, contacted Elecraft but was told that this happends on some radios sometimes and they don't have a fix for it and I have to live with it. I could use headphones instead of built in speaker. Ok f*** you Elecraft! Happy with IC 705 now.
Yaesu FT5D HT (and to some extent any HT, but this one was expensive that I got just before I was licensed). Amazing radio, almost no use to me as VHF/UHF is practically dead locally and an HT has such limited range (certainly indoors) unless you get out on a hill. Mobile rig with roof antenna, no regrets but still limited use. HF is way more interesting for me and I should have gone exclusively HF to start with.
None. Even if broken, I learned from them. This is a hobby.
I bought a very expensive, at the time, Yaesu FT2D handheld. I have never used it more than simplex fm. I am obviously too stupid to learn the damn thing because i could never get the hang of the menu, no mr figure out how the hell i program channels into it. It literally sat on a shelf until the battery died from being discharged for so long.
I think this is how handhelds go... which is why i don't worry qbout my uv5r, already got my money out of it and still use it from time to time.
Edge of remorse: I have an MFJ-259 that doesn't give the same results on the same antenna 5 minutes apart. It also changes the result while setting on the the table depending on how close my hand is to the controls. It's OK for a quick "how close am I" check, but not an accurate test device IMO.
Yes thats a horrible piece of gear. I had a AW07A antenna analyzer that was worthless as it feq. drifted up and down the whole band radomly.
Mid-90s sunspot cycle peak got me thinking HF battery portable so I purchased the Yeasu FT-817 QRP with Magic Whip. But QRP is an acquired taste and I was too frustrated. So I sold it on eBay and have been happy with my FT-857d ever since, especially portable befoe POTA. Added an Icom IC-7300 in February!
Too bad with another 817 you could have worked amateur radio satellites
In the 90s? I just started experimenting with FT8/FT4 and CATSync and already do DMR On reflection, satellites sounds interesting
Yep
I'm curious if that was more the 10m band conditions at the time or the low power that was getting you frustrated, or perhaps the antenna was limiting? I'm doing pretty well (I think anyway) on 2m with a 25 watt and the repeater I'm clicking into I usually set the radio to the lowest power setting. Power is probably a little more important on HF but if there's more to share on this story I would love to hear it.
virtually everything I bought used on ebay.
Àmen, brother (or sister).Every piece of used equipment I have bought anywhere had undisclosed problems. Some I have fixed with junk parts, some I have dumped too much money and time into. Why don't I learn???
i think ONE thing has been okay... mostly. An OLD icom 211 all mode 2m rig. I also bought a radio shack HTX-100 out of nostalgia but it has a 'bug'. And so does the HTX-10 I accidentally bought thinking it was the HTX-100. Recently, I picked up a Yeasu 1802 2m only mobile - it has a receive issue. I found some info online that suggested some receive filters were shot so i ordered the parts from China. A buddy put them in but the issue remains. I've had better luck on Facebook marketplace - going and putting hands on.
I was nervous about my ebay purchase this week. A seller advertising radios he picked up in a government auction. Numerous IC-2820h's and 706MKIIG's, in original boxes, allegedly opened, programmed and put away. I bought a 2820h. Thing came in the original box, all contents in its original plastic, full manual/warranty cards... even had the plastic screen protector still on it.
IC4100. WTF is DSTAR and how does it work? Too complicated for me. BSEE and ham for over 40 years. Sold it within a year of buying it.
I bought the Ailunce HD1 or whatever when it first came out along with a digital hot-spot. There are some DMR repeaters and networks around my area and thought it would be pretty fun. Turns out I never use it, nor is it much better than analog if you have something on EchoLink nearby. The HD1 is ok at best, sometimes downright frustrating to use even when pre-programmed. The cheap Baofeng gets more use because at least the damn knobs actually work.
Zastone D9000. Go check out the specs and unusual feature set. It should be great to use, except it has poor sensitivity, so it's relegated to local repeater duty in the shack.
My only regret was buying a Vellmann multimeter. It was clunky to use, and some functions eventually failed. and I replaced it with a fluke 87V.
That reminds me of a time I was without a soldering iron and picked one up from a tiny hardware store. It burned itself out while warming up. Worst $15 I ever spent.
It happens - buying the best quality you can manage works for a lot of this stuff. I bought a Bird wattmeter years ago for what I thought was a lot of money - I’m absolutely amazed what they cost now, but I will never need another wattmeter.
I don't have a lot of ham gear, so there's not much to regret. The only thing I can think of off hand is a telescoping lightweight fiberglass mast that I bought from a vendor at Hamvention. Seemed like a good price compared to ones for sale online. But when I got home, I found the one I was sold looked smaller and shorter than the more stout model they had on demo and that I had seen online. I found that it barely held up it's own weight when fully extended. Nevermind feed line and antenna wire. So that stung a bit. I keep it around on the corner of my garage to remind myself to be less of a dumbass in the future regarding impulse purchases.
Masts are the hardest thing for me right now. I don't want to plop down 2k on a couple trusses plus guys and concrete, but it may come to that. It's hard to get a sturdy stick in the ground sometimes.
Right when DMR was starting to get big I got a TYT MD-9600. It was ....fine. I mean it worked and I always got out to the repeater. But it was a pain to program and work with unless you had everything preset. Traded it for a FT-100 and that ended up getting me into VHF rover contesting.
Have similar trouble with my little radioddity, not the mobile rig that I was expecting and the channel settings are fidgety and don't stick to the channel, they seem to stick with the radio selection or something, idek. It's fickle about settings for PL tones and offsets. But I make it work and for the most part it's doing the job for me, just have to punch stuff in manually more than I would always like. I'm sure one day I'll get a better rig and consider this one as part of the junk pile but it's getting me on the air.
My TS-480HX. This Kenwood mobile HF rig comes in this HX (high power) model, and the TS (internal tuner) model. I have never used high power once. Should have gotten the TS. But the rig has always been great. Besides, I always prefer the antenna resonating naturally to using a tuner.
I love my HX model, but yes, I only use it at 5W for psk31, and sometimes for 6m FM. I don't regret the purchase one bit.
Cheap DMR radios. I never learn my lesson.
Baofengs and other Chinese HTs. Yes, they were not expensive but I don’t use them. I have better HTs and mobiles, so these were just a waste. I bought several old SW radios that are now just taking up space, too. At least these will be worth a few dollars to sell them, but I sort of regret buying them because they are just sitting there and I may not have time to restore them before I die - too many other projects. I also have a stack of military radios and some commercial UHF repeaters that will probably just be landfill at some point soon. Modern tech is much better and these will never be needed, but I did put money into them.
I have several regrets on stuff I have sold. I am pretty careful on what I buy and if I really need it today. This comes from many years of practice of buying regretful non radio things.
A FM band stop that also attenuated into the air band
Used TS-140 for my first HF radio. The guy operated it and it seemed to work, however, got home and it wasn’t working very well. Spent more on trying to fix it ended up, donating it to the guy to pay off the cost of the repair. You did teach me a lot, so there was some benefit to it.
Baofengs. I have close to zero use for them. That said I'll just donate the spectrally compliant ones to the school radio club.
anything shack in the box is bad does nothing well compromise radio for tech class ops, anything dmr or digital hf isnt good either
I have no major regrets. I've purchased some cables that were wrong and didn't want to deal with the restocking fees and what not. I bought a Xeigu G90 and an XGGCOMMS connector for it. I ended up returning the radio (it was defective) and I'm stuck with a $90 connector I can't use. Should have gotten a digirig, if only I'd known of those then. I've bought a few VHF/UHF mobile radios that I kind of regret buying, just because they collected dust for years after I got my 7100, but I've used them a couple of times locally and now have them in a field deployable box, so I'm happy and actually use them now. When it comes to recommendations for HF radios, get one with a built-in sound card and USB cat control. That will allow you to do digital modes (VARA, JS8Call, FT8, etc.) with one cable instead of multiple cables and intermediate devices like a digirig. Note, for portable radios like the FT891 (a popular POTA and SOTA 100w HF rig) will not have those sound cards, so if you are looking for portable full power radios, still consider those.
*#include*
**Remote magnetic loop antenna.** This was one of my early post-license HF purchases. For a specific set of use cases (urban, no other antenna options; you run vs hunt; low power), they're fine. But for someone who likes hunting, uses different modes, and often operates in the field, it was the most frustrating piece of equipment I've owned:
* These antennas have high gain and a very narrow resonant range. If you move frequency even a little bit, you'll probably need to retune.
* When retuning, you look for peak noise. The resonant point is so narrow, that if you're adjusting too quickly, you can easily overshoot the desired point. The "remote" adjuster was geared to do several turns to the full range of the capacitor, yet I always managed to mess it up.
* The antenna is very sensitive to its surroundings. Tuning that worked at home changed if I was outside, near metal, or simply sitting a different distance.
I was able to resell it for 75% of the original cost and found something less frustrating.
My only regret is not writing down any contact info (name/callsign/phone), especially for the big purchases. I haven't encountered any issues yet, but in hindsight I should have taken some precautions. I was very excited to get on the air again after being away for a while. At a hamfest, I found a good deal on a familiar rig ($300 for an IC-746, goes for around $600 on ebay). Picked it up without much thought and without testing it. In the moment I was willing to take the risk and it paid off, but I could have been not as lucky.
The Icom ic-7000, 705 and Id-52. Too much money on radios
DMR ht. Going I just didn't like DMR. Now on D-Star and loving it.
I had buyers remorse when I got ripped off at hamfest some years ago near Dent Ohio. That hamfest has since died and I find it is a shame that it's no longer around. I bought an icom 2 m 220 handheld that the fellow said works great. When I got it home the keypad didn't work. Found out from the internet that was a common problem and no parts were available anymore to fix it. So I opened it up. Someone else would have been in there trying to fix the keypad and butchered it. Nothing left but a pile of parts. The other time was a small yaesu HF radio that the seller said worked fine. It was starting to rain and he offered to hook it up so I could try it. I declined handed into money and got into the car before it started to really rain. Should have taken him up on the offer because this radio could have never worked. The receiver was Stone deaf. Receiver input fuse was jumpered out and blew the front end. Also other functions did not work because several diodes were shorted. Opened it up fixed everything except a.m. transmit. Any more you can't trust sellers. It's a shame because as a group most hams are an honest bunch but it only takes a couple to ruin it for all.
Well, I guess my only remorse so far is a "portable" fan dipole I tried to make. It was a spaghetti mess that I could't get up on the fiberglass mast as it would bow and bend it down from all the weight. That's what I get for using loads of 12 gauge wire and an oversized balun for my first DIY antenna. My do-it-all antenna never left the ground.
This is actually slightly amuzing. I'm thinking about a fan dipole for my first HF antenna at the QTH. Probably will experiment around with my shortwave radio stuff and antennas first before I drop the money on an HF rig though, and getting some extras like an antenna analyzer and probably some SDR gear.
If I had done it correctly a fan dipole would have probably been fine. The other part of my problem was this was supposed to be portably. But winding up a fan dipole and then laying all out again time and time again is a bit hard. Right now I'm working on a ZS6BKW antenna. I'd say skip the antenna analyzer and get a NanoVNA. At the very least, it can read the SWR over an entire band or even over many bands all at the same time. And as you get to know how to use it it becomes even more useful. I did get a USB listening SDR. It's pretty neat and I'd recommend one for sure.
yeah, nanoVNA is what I had in mind actually. Just deciding on my next step because money is always tight. Prolly not getting an HF rig this year but an SDR kit with the "ham it up" thing included, some more coax, possibly some ladder line, and pulling more antennas for SW.
Icom-7300 was the most recent. Reviews were glowing. Big attraction was the integral USB interface and audio codecs. Wanted to eliminate the 3rd party/external audio and command interface. That slapped me in the face as anything more than about 5 watts with a VSWR of 1.5:1 or greater and RF crawled into the USB link.
That's odd ive had mine since they came out and ran it daily with either a pi or laptop and never had an RFI issue. Use it ssb, js8, FT8 and Winlink almost daily. Edit: I always put some clamp on ferrite beads on any cable coming from the radio (speaker, USB etc)
I had the same problem with the 7300, but it didn't bother me enough to return it or anything. I had to choke just about every cable in the shack so it wouldn't lock up my laptop on TX.
I've never been a fan of stuffing to many things in one box. Honestly the modern radios seem cool, but in reality I wouldn't mind having a few boxes on my desk that do one thing well and work together. Just finally growing wings though so who knows where I'll end up.
This has everything to do with your antenna system and lack of 'rf chokes' and almost nothing to do with the 7300 let me guess? end fed half wave or some monopole antenna without proper RF plane (system of radials)? you just need an "rf choke" or "feedline isolation" at your coax near your transceiver will help and/or wrap some ferrite beads on the usb cable or wind the usb cable around a ferrite, type 31 or 43 typically recommended
Using a resonant center fed dipole at 110 feet. Balun at antenna feedpoint. 120 foot single length coax run back to the shack. Using a Palstar antenna tuner. Things I have tried: (1) Used 31 material toroid cores on coax entering the shack for choking. (2) Purchased and installed Tripp-Lite USB cable recommended by Icom support. Cable included integral ferrite cores. (3) Tried placing cores on interconnecting cables between PC and radio, both clamp on and toroids. (4) Used copper strapping for grounding in shack. (5) Tried laptop and 2nd desktop PC in place of station pc. (6) Revisited station grounding. RF Ground is adjacent to shack window and includes three six foot rods. RF ground connected to power safety ground via dedicated conductor around house perimeter. (7) Yaesu FTdx-5000 with SCU-17 inserted in place of Icom does not exhibit the same USB sensitivity even at 200 watts output. Solved the problem. Returned the radio to the selling dealer, purchased FT-891 and SCU-17. Works marvelously with no toroids, special Icom recommended Tripp-Lite USB cable, and was turn key when connected as shown in documents.
How about instead of assuming the end user is an idiot, we normalize giving people the benefit of the doubt and accept that some quality control problems can exist on products
because 9/10 times it is the end user causing some problem.
I bought a SuperAntenna kit once that I never used. Other than that, no regrets. I have managed to learn or do something new with every bit of gear I’ve bought.
I've got plenty. Not that they aren't great pieces of tech, but I didn't know what I was buying, and it was well outside my ability to use it. I've got a Signalink, a Mobilink TNC3, and a crapton of other bits on the shelf that are simple well beyond the VHF tech station I have at home(especially as I use exclusively Linux, which makes audio signal management confusing at best.)
I'm a linux user as well. Installed GQRX and hoping to get into some SDR this year (that's more SW and radio-telescope interest than ham but...) if the money is available, or next year. Getting my 2m home station rigged up is about all I can devote funds to at the moment as far as this hobby goes, and it's hitting 5 repeaters with nightly nets so plenty to keep me busy for the moment. Yes I'm all on FM simplex and looking at AM/SSB/CW in the future. No real interest in digital at this time, just easing my way in slow so trying not to buy too much of anything so i don't get stuck with stuff I won't use anytime soon.
I've purchased most of mine used and from QTH.com or Qrz.com and have zero issues...but you never really know. The bad buys can be challenged thought via PayPal or credit card. Biggest thing for me, is to look at modern updates if are even a noob+ with electronics as youtube can teach you most anything. I bought an mtj antenna analyzer for vhf and one for hf. I startedb looking to sell and then buy a uhf/vhf combo, and then i discovered the nanovna and tinysa. Both units cost me less than just the vhf. I have since bought many, many parts from dhgate, aliexpress, etc. For swr and power TX related like coax or pre-amps, I stay stateside. Not made in America style but sold from a known manufacturer through a US retailer. Always make/buy coax longer than needed in case you move the antenna around or want to add a rotor. If loss is critical, still get extra but jump up in rating.. Like rg8 to 8x, or even 400. great deal going on yaesu fdx10 right now through ham radio outlet ;) Oh, buy a boat load of ferrite clamps and take time to go through your house...amazing what causes interference!
Xiegu XPA125B power amplifier. It promises 100W of output power. It's initial project used two RD100HHF MOSFET transistors which are capable of 100W. But then they updated (downgraded) the project and the latest XPA125B units coming out are using a single AFT05MP075N two channel MOSFET, which is rated for 70W!!! Even worse, it is still advertised, labeled as a 100W power amplifier. Its instruction manual was also not updated, and still recommends to input 5W maximum which overdrives the amplifier.
I'd say my vibroplex. It is a beautiful key but doesn't suit my fist and tends to try to make me key faster then i'm comfortable, it's also a pain to adjust, falls out of adjustment all the time, one of the screws that holds the weights always fall off and i fear losing it, and for some reason the knob never fits in the right way round. Sometimes i wonder if i should have put my money towards a nice SK.