This is my page where I list all things I'm doing related to ham radio. I received my general license in October 2022.
I would have waited until I was ready to take all three tests (tech, general and extra), but QRZ was giving away a free radio for those who received a ham license before October 31st, so I decided to test for my general first, since I was still several weeks away from being ready to test for my extra class license.
As a result of passing both the tech and the general license test (missed three questions on each one), I qualified for the free radio, which incidentally, just showed up today (11/10/2022).
I passed my extra on November 22 2022
I have managed to get online via echolink and joined several conferences, and even made a few individual contacts, (my first was from Hawaii, and I live in Virginia), so that was a lot of fun.
I did manage to make a couple contacts on my 5 wat handheld radios, one via repeater, and one via the national calling frequency on the 2M band.
I'm working on a few things I hope will make things easier for new hams especially, but for all hams in general, and I' will start posting them here for folks to have access to.
I'm hoping the links below will help lots of folks figure out several things ham related. So, here we go.

The place I studied to obtain my license offers gift subscriptions for their courses, and I've been offering codes for visually impaired hams that wish to become licensed, or who were licensed in the past, and just need to retake the technician exam to reclaim their band privileges.
If you'd like to contribute to this effort, please contact me (address is elsewhere on this page), and I'll provide you with an email where donations can be sent. (I'm not posting it online, I get enough spam as it is.

First of course, is getting certified to be a ham, so in that vane, below is the list of question pools for study material for getting licensed.
Question pool for the Technician question pool good until 2026
Question pool for the general question pool good until June 30 of this year.
and here's the question pool for the Extra class question pool good until 2024.

QUANSHENG Firmware

Here is a hacked firmware file that will give access to many (most) of the UV-K5 menu options, as well as giving access to the current frequency, something sadly lacking from most manufacturers attempts to make the cheap radios accessible for visually impaired hams. As always, corrections, patches, and general comments are welcome. This version was released on August 18, 2024.
Quansheng-k5-softcon.exe
Everything you need should be in the archive, if not, let me know, and I'll get it fixed asap.
Changes include: Dropping the last two numbers of the frequency if they're both zero, and adding a beep to the start of the frequency speeking if you're above 1GHZ. The source code will be located here in a bit, need to prepare it for uploading. This code is under the Apache 2.0 license for those who know or care.

Radios I consider accessible

When I say accessible, I mean ones with speech. I know there are some radios that have cw, or different kinds of beeps, and blind/vi folks can use those to different degrees of accessibility, but I'm only concerned with ham radios that have speech built in, or ones where speech can be added via a module of some kind, or (perhaps in a separate section), radios that can be controlled from a pc, and still access all features of the radio. If you already have a screen reader, and all the radio functions are usable via connecting to the pc, then that could easily be considered accessible, though certainly not stand-alone.
I don't consider the ones with morse code menus to be all that accessible, though I'll probably list them anyway at some future point, because not all hams know morse, and those who don't aren't going to call those rigs accessible.

So, with that out of the way, Here's a list of accessible radios I was able to put together by searching various vendors web sites, and discussions on the blind hams list, as well as many many searches on our good friend google. The only radios on this list I've personally used are some of the Baofeng brand offerings, and the Quansheng Uv-K5. I found the other Baofeng radios by watching youtube videos, to see if the radio spoke when it was turned on.
Sometimes, I had to watch multiple videos on the same radio, because some folks would claim it's an unboxing/startup video, only to explain (halfway through the video), that they changed settings while not recording, to speed up things they're showing in the videos. *grumble* That's not an accurate unboxing demo in my opinion, but
I always thought Baofeng could make their radios nearly 100 percent accessible just by adding a speech readout for the current frequency. Perhaps by tapping the lock button (on models that have them, and perhaps the number sign key for those other models), since it takes a long press to activate the button otherwise. I'm working on modified firmware for the UV-K5 from Quansheng to make the radios as accessible as possible, and yes, there's a key press to get the current frequency. Watch this space for more information.
Knowing what frequency you're on would go a long way towards making a vi/blind ham's life easier.

A good number of these radios that use external speech modules are going to be difficult to make talk, since the speech modules are generally not made anymore, and finding used speech synthesizer modules isn't exactly an easy task, but I'm hoping by offering as complete a list as possible, others will learn what radios can be used, and (hopefully) prepare ahead of time before purchasing the radios so they can get the maximum use out of them.

Of course, having a radio doesn't help if you don't know where those radios can be used.
I find that in general, folks have a hard time, especially after being newly licensed, knowing which frequencies they can use, and which ones they have to share.
Well, wonder no more.
In the following listings, ITU region 2 is the only one shown, and the list of all hams frequencies should be consulted before checking the specific license class, since the specific license list shows what's available in each band for that particular license.
here's a link to show you which frequencies are for use by hams only
You should look at the list of frequencies for All amateur radio licenses before checking the individual license files
Here's a list showing which frequencies Novice and technician licensees can use.
Here's the list for general class amateurs,
Here's the one for advanced class amateurs
and here's the list for extra class licenses.
Hope to see you on the air, and feel free to drop a line and let me know you found my page, I'd appreciate it.
KQ4DZK at softcon dot com