I just ordered a bunch of stuff to begin my amateur radio station. I still only have a technician license which limits a lot of what I can do on lower frequencies but there’s still plenty to explore.
For the base unit I went with the Yaesu FT-991A. I like it because it integrates HF, VHF and UHF bands all in one unit and its powerful enough for the things I want to do. There’s room to grow here as it also works on the frequencies I’m not currently licensed to operate on. For power it can do 50 watts on UHF & VHF with another 50 on the HF bands. Because my HF interests are mostly in the “weak signal” domain that’s more than enough power. And the 50 watts on the UHF/VHF side should be more than fine to do some of the local packet stuff I’m interested in exploring.
Somebody told me that in photography you can’t have enough lenses and in amateur radio you can never have enough antennas! In my case I’m limited to the UHF/VHF bands and a small sliver of the 10 meter HF band. So that helps a bit to narrow things down.
For UHF/VHF I went with what DX Engineering suggested – a Diamond X50A. It’s a simple vertical fiberglass antenna. For HF I found a great blog post from Tom Costello who’s doing exactly what I want to do on HF with a technician license. He built a simple dipole using a pair of MFJ-1610T antennas to make 10 meter contacts. So I bought exactly what he is using.
Because I am not all that handy I will be hiring somebody to mount the antennas and run cable into the house. In the meantime I bought a portable antenna tripod that I’ll set up when I’m exploring the spectrum. I am eventually going to get the UHF/VHF antenna up on the roof but will keep the HF closer to the ground as I’ll be needing a different antenna after I get my General license for the lower bands.
My plan is to try and reach out to a few viewers using the weak signal FT8, JS8talk, and whatever other protocols might work over 10 meters. If you think you are in range let me know and I’ll add you to the list! I’d love to do a few livestreams experimenting with it.