Help & Advice

welcome to the Hobby, 

the little baofeng UV5R is the base model for the beginner, but the downside is unless you live in an area with an active repeater or active VHF / UHF community  it can be a little disheartening as certainly here on sheppey you can go hours without hearing a peep on 2m / 70cm, the other option is one of the RTL-SDR.com SDR (software defined radio) dongles you plug into a computer which can receive all the way from 100khz to 1.2Ghz for about £40 and free SDR# software to run it then you can listen to the different bands and see what you think 

make sure you get a real RTL-SDR.com dongle from technofix the official UK distributor, as the cheap chinese knockoff as not as good and often can't work on HF

there are lots of things to try

digital modes (all the way from morse through RTTY to modern FT8)

voice

Satellite comms which the Baofeng can do (listen to ISS or about 5 FM satellite with a small handheld Yagi antenna

slow scan TV (SSTV) mainly HF on 14.230mhz USB 

then once you have a license you have mobile operation like Parks on the Air (POTA), summits on the air (SOTA) etc

what parts of the hobby you get into depends of your budget, but antennas you can build yourself a lot cheaper than buying them, and often work just as well if you take your time and carefully tune it

any questions just ask

Peter

M0PWX (not Pete M0PSX who runs this site and essex ham)