Starting out in HF can be intimidating. But really there is nothing to be afraid of. As a new ham myself I'm also in this possition. Some advice I've been given is 1) Listen. Listen to how other Hams are operating. Your going to hear good and bad operators. Usually you can tell the difference but not always. Either way you'll get a feel for how things are done. 2) Be polite. Don't walk on other peoples transmissions. Besides being very rude its also illegal to cause intentional interference. If you treat other out there with respect they'll do the same (remember the Golden Rule from elementary school). 3) Make sure you are operating in the frequencies your allowed to. Just because you hear someone else broadcasting in a certain band does not mean your allowed answer them. Also remember to follow the band plan for the band your in. Only use voice in the voice areas of the band. If you start transmitting SSB voice in a CW area your really going to make some people mad. This also goes for only using as much power as you need.

By far the hardest thing to do is drop a couple of thousand dollars on a new HF rig. Well you don't have to. Flea markets, ham fests and sale sites are you best place to start. CARA holds a flea market ever spring and SARA holds one in Calgary in the fall. I will be posting the dates on the web site news when these dates are firmed up. You also don't absolutely have to put up a 50 foot tower. It helps but isn't needed. Just about any peice of wire will work as a receive antenna, just make sure its long enough. If you want to transmit you will need a few extras but not many. I may be corrected here but for my current setup this is what I have. A simple 80 metre QRP rig that runs off of 12 volts at a max 5 watts (not ajustable) that I got at the spring flea market. My antenna is a simple G5RV that I got for 65 bucks brand new. The most expensive peice of equipment I bought was an antenna tuner. Its a LDG AT-100Pro auto-tuner and with the G5RV (in a very wierd configuratino) I can tune it to about a 1.3 SWR. Now this is far from the perfect setup but I'm on the air. Now I just need to learn to key a bit better and I'll actually transmit something someone can copy. This whole setup cost be about 400 dollars. But remember the tuner was 250 of that. You can get much cheaper tuners.

When you are looking at radio's, know whats out there. There are litterally thousands of radios. Your best resource is eham.net. You can't do a lot of research on a radio at a flea market so at least get a general idea of makes (Yaesu, Icom, Alico, Kenwood). Find out what models are top of the line, middle and just plain stay away from. You'll get an idea of what make and model you want after reading a few reviews. Also ask other local hams. Your going to get a lot of opinions but again your get an idea of what other are using and what they think of them.

Stay tuned for more. Like making your first contact!