I’m a ham and, like many others, my interest and, interests within the hobby, have waxed and waned over the years. I started out heavily into public safety Motorola gear which was not easy to break into in the mid-late 90s. There was a lot of pirated software to acquire and grey to black market radios to sniff out. Cool crypto stuff, though not allowed on ham bands, it was around.
Then, I shifted to commercial HF rigs, especially those capable of embedded Automatic Link Establishment / ALE, a digital mode which can help determine the best band for a certain location and time of day. I have several different Motorola (which Ma Moto spun off, first Mobat, then Elbit) Micom HF rigs, some with pretty rare but awesome autotuners, very important for ALE use. I picked up a neat Barrett 2050 along the way, though it doesn’t have the ALE option flashed.
Then, I got into some green radios: military HF manpacks. Modern rigs are ultra rare and, since you’re trying to bid against literal mercenaries, cartels, paramilitaries & militias, the prices are astronomic. I lucked into finding one that was $$ when it should have been $$$$$^3. Someone from Sweden told me my particular rig was $70,000 new. 1.6-60MHz, embedded ALE, GPS, all sorts of other data modes, silent autotuner, waterproof & airdroppable, the works. Even the batteries are cool.
I’ve been to Dayton about half a dozen times though not for the last 5-6 years. I was able to check into three nets with my sweet manpack: one each on 80, 20 & 6 meters. And who wouldn’t want to hang out with guys like this (That was from the 6 meter ‘Cold War’ net/eyeball QSO in 2015)? Watch out for those storm clouds with those antennas! I met up with another doper at Dayton years ago, forget his username & call, oops.
However, while a lot of this has happened in the last ten years, my true interest during that time has been QRP SSB. The only rig I have that is marketed to hams is my trusty Yaesu FT-817ND. It is 5 watts maximum and I don’t use an amplifier. It’s like the power of a nightlight. My antenna is made of scavenged CAT-5 strung up as a dipolish in my attic rafters, perhaps a 30 foot span overall. I rely heavily on favorable solar conditions which haven’t been so good for a while now. But I have a few confirmed ‘1000 miles / watt’ contacts which is truly amazing in any case, especially since I don’t have a beam antenna. The guys on the other end probably do but to think of how little signal squirts out my radio in many directions, I still find it amazing.
To OP’s question, if I lost it all and had to build fresh, I’d really consider some of the new Chinese stuff that’s been developed lately. The Xiegu G90, for example packs quite a bit into a sub-$500 rig. Remote head, built in autotuner, colorful display, respectable 20 W output. I think more attention should be paid to the antenna but you can’t really study what works for your particular situation without a radio.
