My Ham Qualifications:

I have a General Class Ham License

Equipment I now have:

Yaesu VX-5R - 5 Band Hand held "handy talky"

See specs here: 

This radio works great when there are emergencies that overload the cellular frequencies.

It is also good to use with repeaters, which extend your transmit/receive range dramatically. I am not using it nearly as much as I planned to, even though the radio was fairly expensive.

I'm used this not only to listen to world band stations, but also to practice the morse code. I needed to learn the Morse code (10 words/minute) for the General Class License.

It can also be used on the sailboat until I install insulators on the backstay.

I learned Ham mainly to open up communication options while sailing.

The system I use is:

Icom 706MKIIG.  The radio is very old (25 plus years), but is still considered to be one of the best mobile ham radios.  It has a removable face plate so the chassis can be mounted in a compartment while the control head can be mounted on the panel at the navigation station on the boat. 

Icom 706 MKIIG radios are still easy to find on Ebay.

SCS - PTC II Pro Pactor 3 Modem.

This modem allows the ham radio to communicate wirelessly over HF frequencies using a laptop.  This allows you to send and receive non-commercial emails and receive weather reports and radar images and grib files. Grib files include graphical weather maps with wind speed and direction and pressure information to forecast future weather conditions. Grib files can be overlayed onto the charts in a navigation software application.

I use RosePoint Coastal Explorer navigation software. The software  is outstanding. 

Pactor 3 is slow compared to broadband and is even slow compared to dial-up internet, which some of us still remember.  It is amazing though to be able to use radio to send and receive data.

I use RMS Express software, which simplies the use of the pactor modem.