It's frustrating how a cheap VHF handheld is often recommended as a "first radio". What you can do with one is quite limited, and for most practical purposes you'll be tethered to a repeater.
I would always recommend a cheap, probably second hand, desktop HF radio to start with. You will be forced to learn how to make a simple antenna, how to cope with impedance matching, and in the process of using it you will learn about HF propagation, and the reward is that you get to communicate across the world, not just across your town. It's a much better, and much more educational place to start.
I'm not sure that is a bad first radio. When I got my Technician license, repeaters were more or less what were available to me anyway. I got a hand-held and non-hand-held but ended up using the hand-held more often as it was always with me.
People get into ham radio for different reasons — not always for technical reasons. And then people's interest in a hobby can change over time as well — perhaps they begin to get long-distance curious.
Handheld VHFs are much easier to setup, and you can fidget with one even before the license, given that you don't actually transmit anything, just listen. Not everyone has the space or time to setup a desktop and antenna themselves.
In that case, the best experience in my opinion is to DIY one of the simplest radio receiver, that is, a super-regenerative or similar one that could be built off a single transistor/jfet and a high impedance headphone. Or, to make things cleaner, a couple transistors where 1st one acts as antenna preamplifier (and -very important- to prevent the other transistor oscillations to be radiated by the antenna).
It's a very simple project that can be built on a breadboard in an afternoon, encourages experimenting and teaches a lot in the process.
Just 1 or 2 transistors you say? Link to a circuit diagram (or even an ASCII art reply) greatly appreciated - sounds like a fun way to spend an afternoon or an evening.
Plenty of examples to choose from, just search for images of "super-regenerative transistor receiver schematic" (with no quotes) on your favorite search engine. This also works well when looking for examples or data about circuits or parts, for example "audio compressor schematic" or "LM13700 data sheet" (again, no quotes). Swapping "data sheet" with "pdf" is often more effective to find the actual document.
And this is why the hobby is dying. Home ownership is well beyond the means of most of the population now, and rental properties/apartments do not allow antenna structures. Those who persist and evaluate portable/mobile HF ops or settle with a compromise antenna get soundly shit upon by other hams who say "If you can't put up a beam on a tower and you can't afford a legal-limit amplifier to feed it with, why bother?"
The problem with second hand HF rigs is the uncertainty of supply and not knowing what rig is good and what is not.
And even a cheap used rig can be 10 - 30 times the cost of an entry level handheld radio.
And then you buy a power supply for the HF rig for another five baofengs worth.
And realize that the technicians license only allows voice on 10m.
Why should I be interested in any of what you're going on about?
My GMRS and Technician licenses issued on the same day not quite two months ago. I'm interested in immediate family communications, communicating with people in my area, and potentially calling for help from nearby strangers. I only decided to get the Amateur license because I realized the valley in western NC where we have a home does not have a GMRS repeater but there is an Amateur club running VHF/UHF, and figured I'd have better luck convincing them to add GMRS by joining their club than as an outsider.
A cheap Chinese UHF/VHF/GMRS HT with a knock-off NA-771 reaches as far as my family needs.
And FWIW, the top feed on Broadcastify the past few days is coming from a VHF repeater on Mount Mitchell (N2GE via W4HTP due to lack of Internet).
If you want to start with HF I suggest to buy a USDX/(tr)USDX.
It's cheap (around 150€), portable, cover many bands and easy to operate. Some versions had also the integrated SWR meter and integrated battery.
And with a simple cable you can interface with a PC for digital mode.
A caution about type acceptance. Pretty much anything meeting spectral purity and bandwidth requirements can be used in amateur radio bands, but that isn’t reciprocal for other services.
Unsoldering a diode to make it work outside the ham bands does not make it legal. Lots of services are now 12.5 kHz deviation, so showing up with a “modded” 25kHz deviation radio is gonna cause grief.
> I now have GMRS as well, which is one of those hidden gems I wish more people in the public at large knew about.
Given how many of the GMRS enthusiasts are just itching to turn it into the zoo that is CB, I kinda wish the public would continue not caring about it.
The one thing that GMRS has going for it in preventing this is limited range.
It's easy to be an anonymous a-hole on CB because there's a decent chance you're far away (like, perhaps even continents away) from the person you're talking to.
Unless you have a very high-up repeater and legal limit transceiver, you're unlikely to be able to talk to someone beyond your metro area in GMRS. More likely than not you'll see the person you're talking to at least once a month. This strikes "anonymity" from what I like to call the Greater RF F*kwad Theory, wherein Ordinary person + audience + anonymity = f*kwad.
I would always recommend a cheap, probably second hand, desktop HF radio to start with. You will be forced to learn how to make a simple antenna, how to cope with impedance matching, and in the process of using it you will learn about HF propagation, and the reward is that you get to communicate across the world, not just across your town. It's a much better, and much more educational place to start.