General-class ham here, licensed for 3 years. I'd say I have an intermediate understanding of RF, electronics, and electrical components. Decent-ish at reading schematics. Many years of tinkering/soldering/etc under my belt in various other hobbies.
I've wanted to take the next step in to being able to diagnose/repair my own radios for some time now, and recently the last guy in town that handled radio/amp diag and repair for us hams in the area moved away so I figured now is as good a time as any to start learning and see if I like it enough to stick with it. Not interested in doing this for money at all, I do IT for a living and that pays the bills. This is just going to be a weekend hobby, and if I'm any good at it, something I can do for the other guys in the local ARES club. Main purpose is that it just plain interests me, and I like working on stuff like this.
I figured I'd get my start on CBs, simpler and cheaper than amateur radios, so I have a few cheap Cobra 29 LTDs on the way from eBay that probably need various repairs or calibrations. I've done a lot of googling, reading forum posts, and watching videos over the last few weeks. I have an email out to Lou Franklin to order his books and a few tune up manuals (no reply yet, he still around and selling books?), and have been browsing what I can from the mirrored cbtricks sites.
On to my question; realistically, how effective can I be at radio diag and repair with basic tools, a dmm, a dummy load, and an swr meter? At what point do I need a spectrum analyzer, signal generator, oscilloscope, etc? Are people still just finding and buying old gear on ebay? It seems anyone I watch on Youtube that does this stuff has all that, and I imagine quite a bit of money invested in to it.
Thanks for your time.
