One of the purposes of Hamfests is for people who has surplus equipment, to sell that equipment to help other hams out.

Sometimes you can get some really good deals there.

You need to forget about the walkie talkie idea.
Somewhere along the line, someone forgot to tell you - this is called HAM RADIO / NOT HAM WALKIE TALKIE.

For even a 100 something dollars, you can buy a brand new Yaesu mobile 2 meter rig with 50 watts of transmit power and a new microphone, which is programmable.

For some stupid reason, people have lost sight of what AMATEUR RADIO, is really all about.
I hear all kinds of cries and complaints, where people thinks that the government and others should support their HOBBY.

After all, this is a HOBBY.
Much like GOLF, or Baseball or stock car racing.

You wouldn't expect the government to purchase you a set of golf clubs and you wouldn't expect the government to buy you a set of tires -

But for some reason, when HAMS gets a license, they refuse to spend any money, and if someone gives them something and it works, even just a little, they refuse to spend their own money to buy something better.

You are going to need to get away from the walkie talkie mentality, and the hitting the one or two local repeaters and thinking that it makes you a ham.

Even just in my situation, I put up a Diamond V2000 antenna above the roof of the house and I bought a Yaesu 8900R transceiver and I entered in over 100 repeaters and I can talk 6 meters, 2 meters and 440 Mhz as much as I want.

Even though it is not HF, I can make contacts 100 miles away.

This is something you cannot do with a walkie talkie, even with a mobile external antenna.

Unfortunately, the ARRL and the clubs are afraid to tell their members this stuff, in fear of loosing members.
They coddle and nurse maid these hams until finally they are so brain washed, they believe that what they are doing is still ham radio.

There is a whole big world out there.
Everything from 160 meters up into the GHz bands.

Out of the 700,000 plus ham radio licenses, there might be 100,000 actual ham radio operators.
Out of that 100,000 - probably 65% of them only holds a Technician class license.

That means that out of this whole country, there might only be 40,000 actual ham radio operators that operates on the HF bands.

That's not a lot of people in the grand scheme of things.

And it seems like most of those that are not hams, are either waiting to retire from work and graduate from the walkie talkie band, as soon as someone dies and leaves them something.

We are printing all kinds of licenses, but I don't hear a lot of new voices on the radio.
One reason for this is the fact that most of those 650,000 licensees only has a walkie talkie, and they wait until the one day a week when their club or local group has a net, where they can check in and say their call sign and say NO TRAFFIC, AND SHUT THEIR RADIO BACK OFF AND THINK THAT THEYARE REAL HAMS AND THAT IF THERE WAS A EMERGENCY THAT THEY WOULD BE OF SOME USE TO THE HAM RADIO COMMUNITY.

My question is - if the local repeater is blown down, who are you going to talk to? Especially in rural America where your signal might only travel one mile or less?

Go buy yourself a real radio and get on the air and talk to people from other places and if you don't have a General or higher class license, put your nose in the book and start studying and upgrade your license privledges...