I Never Bought Either of the Radios That Made Me a Ham
- 7 min reading time
A free Baofeng arrived as a throw-in on a Temu order and got me licensed in December 2024. I was on the air four days later. My brother's FT-450 put me on HF in March. I didn't buy either radio.
Licensed: 12/28/24 · First call: KR4ABQ · First contact: 1/1/25 · Current call: W4GGJ · QSOs as of 8/29/26: 12,935 · Countries: 186
Two radios turned a want I’d had since I was a teenager into a license and a log. One came free in a box I ordered for other things. The other came from my brother.
The part I never did
I wanted a ham license when I was a teenager. I never looked into it. I didn’t take a class, I didn’t find a club, I didn’t ask anybody how it worked. The want sat there, life moved on, and the subject didn’t come up again for a very long time.
That’s the whole first chapter. Nothing stopped me. I just never started.
The throw-in
I placed a Temu order for other things and a free Baofeng 5RX came in the box with it. Nobody handed it to me. Nobody mentored me into it. A marketplace decided I should have a radio I hadn’t asked for.
So I had a handheld and no license to transmit with it. That’s a specific kind of annoying, and it turned out to be enough.
December 28
I passed my Technician on 12/28/24 and got KR4ABQ, issued out of Pinellas Park. The week between Christmas and New Year.
Four days later I made my first contact. KT4WX, James Davis, on 442.550 through the Eagle Net Boyette AllStarLink node, at 02:06 UTC on New Year’s Day. 70 centimeters, out of a handheld that cost me nothing, four days after the license came through. Whatever else I get wrong in this hobby, I did not sit on it.
The sixteen days I don’t count
There are fifteen contacts in the KR4ABQ log, all between 1/1 and 1/16/25, all 2 meters and 70 centimeters through repeaters and AllStar nodes. Two of them are England and Scotland. That’s the internet, not the ionosphere, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
I don’t pay much attention to that logbook. It’s a pile of node contacts I probably shouldn’t have logged and logged anyway. What it’s actually worth is the date on the first line — I was on the air in four days with the only radio I owned, and most people who pass the exam never get there at all.
The vanity call came through on 01/17/25 and my first contact as W4GGJ was the next day: AI6JB in Roseville, California, on 145.430 FM through AllStar node 51018. Also internet-linked. Also not 2,274 miles of 2 meters.
That’s the entire career of that Baofeng. VHF and UHF, sixteen contacts, and nothing in the log since. Anybody who tells you a free handheld built a log is selling something.
The second radio
My brother gave me a Yaesu FT-450. I don’t have the exact date, but it was around the weekend before 3/17/25, because 3/17/25 is when I worked G1PPU — Dr. Walker, in Leicester, England — on 28.475, 10 meter SSB at 100 watts. 4,460 miles, on the one slice of HF phone a Technician gets, less than three months after passing the exam. He gave me a 55. I sent him a 23, because I could barely hear him.
Everything on HF came off that radio, and later the Xiegu X6200 in the field. Twenty months in, the log reads 12,935 contacts, 8,967 of them confirmed, 186 countries. I have 294 DXCC credits sitting in LoTW that I still haven’t filed for.
So there were two radios and I paid for neither of them. That’s not humility, it’s just what happened.
What the first one actually was
A free Baofeng off a Temu order is the exact radio this hobby sneers hardest at. Cheap, imported, wide as a barn door, the thing people write forum posts about. If I had walked into a club meeting in January 2025 and set it on the table, somebody would have told me what was wrong with it before they told me how to program it.
I know that because I’ve watched it happen to other people since. Somebody asks how to get into the local repeater and gets a lecture on spurious emissions instead of an offset and a tone. He gets an answer to a question he didn’t ask, and he doesn’t come back.
That radio is why I’m licensed. Not a good radio, and not one I’d recommend to somebody with money to spend, but it was in my hand when the want came back.
Would I tell someone to start with a Baofeng?
Yes, if that’s the radio they already have. No, if they’re asking me what to buy.
Those aren’t in conflict. If you own one, it will get you on a repeater and it will get you talking to people, and that’s the entire job of a first radio. If you’re standing there with money and a question, there are better handhelds and I’ll say so. What I won’t do is tell somebody holding a working radio that they need a different one before they’re allowed to start.
Plenty of people in this hobby will hold the line on standards. Almost nobody is working on getting somebody to try a second time.
73 de W4GGJ
By the numbers
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Licensed | 12/28/24 (Technician) |
| Original callsign | KR4ABQ |
| Vanity callsign | W4GGJ, granted 01/17/25 |
| Current class | General |
| First radio | Baofeng 5RX, free with a Temu order |
| First contact | KT4WX, 2025-01-01, 70cm FM, 442.550 MHz via AllStarLink |
| Contacts as KR4ABQ | 15, all 2m/70cm FM via repeaters and AllStar nodes, 1/1–1/16/25 |
| First contact as W4GGJ | AI6JB, 2025-01-18, 2m FM via AllStar node 51018 |
| First HF radio | Yaesu FT-450, a gift from my brother |
| First HF contact | G1PPU, 2025-03-17, 28.475 MHz 10m SSB, 100W, 4,460 mi |
| QSOs | 12,935 |
| Confirmed | 8,967 |
| Countries worked | 186 |
| LoTW DXCC credits | 294 (qualified, not filed) |
| Log of record | QRZ |
| Figures as of | 8/29/26 |
Current field kit: Xiegu X6200 · Radioddity HF-010. Radioddity affiliate, code W4GGJ for $15 off. I get a small commission, you get the discount.