Of buying many radios there is no end, and cool new features empty the pocket.
Ecclesiastes 12:12 (Ham Radio Version)

The third decade of the 21st century provides an abundance of the best and most feature rich amateur radios of all time. While other eras have had their glories, there are no better receivers in terms of sensitivity, no better transmitters in terms of features and no better user interfaces than in the radios on the market now.

While the major manufacturing of amateur radios has consolidated, low volume custom manufacturing has supported an explosion of small manufacturers around the world. Useful kit built radios, far from being extinct, are growing. Contributing to this growth in variety of radios, is the greatest abundance of modes & frequencies of amateur radio communication. The variety in major radio transmission modes – AM, FM, SSB, CW and especially digital with it’s growing list of sub-modes (RTTY, FT8/JS8Call, WSPR, etc.) plus the widest variety of amateur frequencies — from long and medium wave (new since 2000) through High Frequency (HF), VHF, UHF and Super High Frequency (microwave) — all helps spawn new equipment. There is also larger number of station types (fixed, field, portable, mobile of many types, handheld, etc.) and specialized operating locations or propagation types that dictate a variety in equipment. The wide variety of radio sport activities – Summits on the Air or “SOTA“, “IOTA” (Islands), “POTA” (Parks), contesting, international (DX) expeditions) and propagation paths (repeaters, satellites, ionospheric refraction, meteor/aurora reflection, even bouncing signals off the moon) each favor different transceivers. There is also a hundred year history of the amateur hobby & service, which produced many classic radios and esoteric hardware to collect.

For someone with even mildly eclectic interests, there is ample pressure to “get more stuff” for those involved in amateur radio. Limits can prevent the burden of caring for the things destroying the joy of the learning, service and camaraderie of the hobby and service of amateur radio operation. Is 12 a good limit? We’ll use a version of an old counting rhyme to name our 12 amateur transceivers.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief
Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief

Tinker – our first radio – is a kit we wired up, the µBitX v.5 from Indian inventor Ashar Farhan with aftermarket microcode by Chinese programmer Dr. Ian Lee. You can view the time lapse videos of Cary and I building the radio. An everyman HF radio in affordability, but low power. The purpose of this radio was learning how a radio works. It serves this purpose still, as Kim continues to tinker with it.

Tailor is a repurposed commercial Motorola GTX900 (LTR) for use on the 900Mhz/23cm repeaters and VHF & up contests. A gift from a friend and a new battery/antenna from eBay.

Soldier is the mid power (100W) and somewhat fiddly Japanese made Yaesu FT-891. This is the radio that covers the HF bands available Kim’s General Amateur Radio license. It currently is mounted with the MFJ939y on a cutting board, inside an orange go box. It runs from the radio bench and portable inside the go box (water resistant for marine and car portable field operations), or direct from the cutting board (carried in a bike pannier or backpack) for parks and summits. Cary has used it with her Technician Amateur Radio license for 6 meter band field day operations and to make a 10 meter contact in Argentina during a contest. Possibly the best value for money HF radio of 2019, it is best use is for portable operations from a go box that can be transported by vehicle plus a short walk to the field station.

Spy is a relatively lightweight, very robustly constructed, low power (10W), Japanese made Icom 705 with wireless connectivity, advanced interface and digital features, making it really useful for carrying up to hilltops to do digital operations like FT8/JS8call or DStar digital voice on HF/VHF/UHFin addition to all the historic modes like FM/AM/CW/SSB.

Rich Man and Poor Man are our consumer priced, learner handheld VHF/UHF radios – the ubiquitous Chinese made Baofeng UV-5R. They are great backups and used in our “get home” bags.

Beggar Man and Thief are the loud, big battery and feature rich digital/analog 144/220/440Mhz 878 Plus handhelds by Chinese brand AnyTone. Super flexible and reliable, these are our primary family and repeater communications radios. Because of the good battery, Thief is my “getting there” on-the-trail radio for SOTA hikes.

Doctor is the special capability VHF UHF handheld for satellite and mountaintop work. The Japanese made FT3DR has so many functions I’m still learning them more than a year after it arrived Christmas 2020. However, it has made recording fast paced satellite contacts easy and reliable and sends digital messages (APRS) from areas with no cell coverage.

Lawyer is ours on a technicality. Like Merchant, Lawyer is a tri-band FM radio, but has DMR digital as well as analog. Lawyer warmed the radio bench his first year in 2023, but 2024 we hope to have him on a slide mount in the truck, so it can be used both base and mobile. His party trick, is the BT-01 Bluetooth remote display and microphone, which will allow us to house him entirely under the rear seat when used in the truck.

Merchant is our MB-60 slide mounted AnyTone 5888 UV III tri-band FM analog radio. A great value, being an older design, it has a 35w 220Mhz frequency as a third band, as opposed to the usual dual bands, plus great service from our local vendor of these radios. The slide mount lets Merchant work from our SUV or the radio bench.

Chief is reserved for the future ultimate base station radio, capable of displaying the traffic of an entire band and being operated remotely from a computer or tablet anywhere in the world.

That’s it. No Baker’s Dozen! Er, well, except for “Sherrif,” which is a Kenwood TK290 handheld, on loan from LACDCS 22 for disaster communications work. My excuse is, that’s not our radio. :p