Radios

Once you start with HF, things can get expensive very quickly. Right now I'm on a budget so my setup is limited, and I'm mostly on UHF and VHF.

Baofeng UV-5RE

<$25. UHF/VHF handheld. Only ~5W.

This radio went into long-term storage before I got my Technician license, so I ended up buying another, slightly upgraded, Baofeng (see below).

Baofeng UV-S9PLUS

<$35. UHF/VHF handheld. Only ~8W, but that would probably be fine if I lived closer to a repeater.

I use a Nagoya NA-771 antenna (~$20) which I had to modify slightly to fit. Receive is clear, but net-control struggles to hear me.

QYT KT-8900D

<$70. UHF/VHF mobile. Claims ~25W, (but probably closer to 20W) works great in the car with a mag-mount antenna (I spent ~$35 in total on a magnetic base + cable, ground-plane and vertical).

Raspberry Pi

40m WSPR Beacon. 10mW.

Using the WsprryPy code and a low pass filter* (LPF) on a Raspberry Pi 3A+ hooked up to an end-fed half-wave antenna, I was able to get some pings out. I initially tried with a Pi Zero (that's why the LPF components are installed on an Adafruit Perma Proto Bonnet rather than the supplied PCB in the kit) but I had too many problems with the strange OS-level issues when using the Zero.

*search eBay for "DIY Low Pass Filter Kit"

I'm also using the same Raspberry Pi 3A+ and a Raspberry Pi 400 with USB RTL-SDR dongles as receivers.