About This Site
The questions new hams ask right after they pass, answered honestly.
Most ham radio content ends at the exam. Study guides get you to a passing score, and then go quiet right when the real decisions start: which radio to actually buy, how to program it without guessing, why the local repeater sounds dead, and what to say the first time you key up. Hamrigs picks up exactly where those guides stop.
What This Site Is
Hamrigs is an independent resource for US adults working through the beginner-to-intermediate stretch of amateur radio: deciding whether the hobby is worth pursuing, getting licensed, choosing a radio that actually matches how they plan to use it, setting the thing up, and figuring out how ham radio stacks up against GMRS, Meshtastic, and other alternatives.
The scope stays narrow on purpose. This is not a DXing or contesting site, not a software-defined radio blog, and not a place for antenna modeling or Part 90 commercial radio questions. Those are real corners of the hobby, but they belong to operators who are years past the questions this site exists to answer. A new Technician holder does not need EZNEC. They need to know why their handheld cannot reach a repeater that is fifteen miles away.
How This Site Works
Every guide assumes the reader just walked out of an exam session, or is about to. The site starts from that moment, not from a generic ham radio primer written for no one in particular.
License fees, question pool counts, wattage, price ranges, and range claims come from FCC documentation, ARRL publications, and current product listings, not rounded-off guesses.
Hundreds of Volunteer Examiner sessions leave a pattern: which new hams get on the air within a month, and which ones never do. That pattern shapes what gets written and how it’s framed.
A paid study course is not always the answer, and it is never presented as the only one. Free resources get recommended when they are genuinely enough, and the site says so plainly.
Why Hamrigs Exists
At almost every exam session, someone passes, shakes hands, and asks the same question before they’ve even picked up their new call sign: “okay, so what do I actually do now?” A few months later, a lot of them have not made a single contact. The radio sits in a drawer. The license is real, but it never turns into anything.
That is not because those people gave up on the hobby. It is because passing the Technician exam does not teach any of it: not how to program a handheld, not what to say the first time on a repeater, not which radio actually fits a family’s emergency-prep plan versus a hiker’s pack. Hamrigs exists to close that specific gap, between holding a license and actually using it.
Who Is Behind It
Hamrigs is written by Henry Rhodes, a licensed Amateur Extra Class operator and an accredited Volunteer Examiner with the ARRL VEC. He has administered and graded hundreds of FCC amateur radio exams over more than a decade, which puts him in a strange position: he sees the full range of new operators, the ones who pass and thrive, the ones who pass and quietly disappear, and the specific moment where those two paths split.
Henry started this site to answer the questions that come up in the two minutes after an exam session ends, questions no study guide covers and that leave a lot of new licensees stuck at the starting line. He is direct about what the exam does and does not teach, and he does not pretend a license automatically means someone is on the air. You can read more on the author page.
How Advice Is Checked
Guidance here is built from FCC rules and fee schedules, ARRL publications, NCVEC question pool documentation, and direct Volunteer Examiner observation, cross-checked against what actual operators are saying on r/amateurradio, r/hamradio, RadioReference.com forums, and QRZ.com. Those forums matter because they show where people actually get stuck, not just what a manufacturer’s spec sheet claims should happen.
None of that means a forum comment becomes a fact on its own. Equipment claims still get checked against manufacturer specifications and current listings. When an answer depends on someone’s use case, whether that’s an off-grid hiker or a family setting up a base station, the article says so instead of pretending one setup fits every operator.
With Gratitude
Some of the most useful ham radio knowledge does not come from a manual. It shows up in a Reddit thread where someone finally admits they were too nervous to key up on a repeater for six months, in a QRZ post where a new operator works out why their programming kept failing, or in a forum reply where someone explains the exact moment they stopped being afraid of saying the wrong thing on the air.
Those admissions matter because they are the real barriers, the ones no study guide mentions. Hamrigs is better because people are willing to describe what actually confused them instead of pretending the exam explained everything.
To every operator who has posted “I felt stupid asking this, but” instead of staying quiet: someone with a brand-new call sign is going to get on the air faster because of it.
Get in Touch
Found something wrong, have a question about getting licensed or picking a radio, or noticed a spec that needs a second look? Send a note directly.