Curious, I have a computer business in Tulsa, and I've been thinking about selling Baofeng UV5R radios customized with Tulsa area repeaters and other frequencies. Would any of you be interested in buying these? I of course could also customize them with the frequencies in your area if you don't live around Tulsa. You do need a ham radio license to legally transmit in the ham bands. I'd be happy to also sell a ham license manual with the radio.
Would you buy Baofeng ham radios customized with your area frequencies?
- Thread starter Cougar
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By customized do you mean just storing the repeater information into memory? If that is all you doing, I personally would not pay extra for it. Your price point would need to be what Amazon is selling them for. Don't want to be a downer on the idea, It would be great for novice HAMs to get started. If I were you I would check with the local HAM clubs. Maybe do some kind of promotion with them for new HAM operators.
The Baofeng radios are actually pretty good for the money. Anyone in TRO or TARC that has a copy of Chirp will program any newbies radio for free. It would be nice to have a local supply of these radios to refer people to, but I don't see anyone paying for programming.
As a consumer, I would not pay to have a radio programmed. Heck, programming it is part of how the user get's to know the rig.
I think it's an interesting idea and has some potential. I probably wouldn't buy them for myself because, like aviator, I'd want to learn how to program them myself if I were to get them. Might make a good gift idea for someone who is kind of interested in ham radio or prepping and doesn't know where to start, though.
Edit: I also understand that it is legal to own and listen to ham equipment without a license. A license is only required if you want to transmit on the ham bands. And if SHTF bad enough for the government to go tits up, the license would be a moot point and having the equipment on hand would be a good idea.
Edit: I also understand that it is legal to own and listen to ham equipment without a license. A license is only required if you want to transmit on the ham bands. And if SHTF bad enough for the government to go tits up, the license would be a moot point and having the equipment on hand would be a good idea.
The SHTF scenario would be absolutley correct. With one caveat: in that scenario, many if not all of the repeaters that would be programmed into the radio would no longer be working. THAT is when you need to know how to program the radio on your own .
Yes, that is all I mean. I know it's not hard, but I thought some people might prefer it over having to do it themselves. Just a thought.
Thanks for the feedback.
I suppose the real question would be "How much would you be charging for these radios that already had the info programmed in?".
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