> This is not to say that working HF doesn't open up additional doors, because clearly it does. That's basically it. Shit, I was a tech for twenty years, but n

> This is not to say that working HF doesn't open up additional doors, because clearly it does. That's basically it. Shit, I was a tech for twenty years, but never did much because I wasn't interested in club stuff or chatting on the local repeater. At some point I got an RTL-SDR, but dealing with noise and frustrating software issues killed my interest in it... Then around the time my license was up for renewal again, I studied for a week and got my extra ticket, and bought a rig that could do HF-70cm and suddenly I was able to try anything that interested me. If you've got a $500 budget, you can do the same... no reason to limit yourself.