New ham gear question

[Earl Faubion]

In anticipation of passing my Technician license in a few weeks, I've started shopping around for ham gear and have narrowed my choices down. One day this week I was discussing those choices with a local ham friend who cautioned me about buying new gear, saying he'd seen several instances of it breaking down due to the no-lead solder the manufacturers now have to use. His advice was to consider buying used equipment made before the no-lead regs went into effect.

This is the first I've heard of any such thing and after poking around online I didn't find much to back up what he said, maybe I didn't look in the right places, I don't know, but if it's affecting ham gear I'd think it'd be affecting other consumer electronics too. Has anyone heard of this before? Given a choice I prefer buying new gear, at least for my first rig.

 

[Van DeWald]

I've bought new Kenwood gear (2m rigs) the last two times I've bought a radio. Both are in my vehicles and have not had any trouble.

 

[John Diel]

I haven't heard anything on the "no-lead" score for equipment failure. Most HAM Radios and Commercial Radios are required to meet a certain ISO standard and many HAM rigs meet or exceed the MIL standards as well. So they generally hold up pretty well.

I would also look at the manufacturer too. Yeasu, ICOM, Kenwood are all big names in the HAM radio industry. Motorola is another big name in the Commercial Radio industry and many of their radios can be programmed for HAM use.

Good luck and enjoy!

 

[Earl Faubion]

Thanks guys. My friend favors ICOM and says Kenwood and Yaesu are good too. I appreciate your input on this.

 

[John Wetter]

No matter the brand, if you think you're going to seriously use your gear, all I'd buy would be a dual-band radio that has cross-band repeat functionality and you can also display VHF/VHF or VHF/UHF.

-John