More or less all the modern big-3 (Icom, Yaesu, Kenwood) HF transceivers are decent these days.
No absolute garbage.
So it's more of a question about features and ergonomics. Imo.
I'd suggest just getting a relatively modern 100W HF rig with good reviews.
Read the reviews and look at videos to see how they are operated.
Most of the "cheaper" rigs (1000-1500usd) have tons of menus.
If the rig does not have a built in tuner, get an external one. Be it manual or an autotuner.
If you want to invest on something right away, get a decent power supply that can supply around 40Amps of 13.8V. You can likely get away with less. Most cheaper rigs don't come with internal powersupplies, instead they accept 13.8V (the nominal 12V you encounter in cars).
That means that you can easily run them off batteries or in your car for mobile use.
>> but I'm afraid of tossing my money away.
That I cannot really fix.
What do you want to do?
I like building things and hackign things. Operation is secondary to building.
Some folks chase DX.
Some folks contest.
Some folks contest on 10GHz on a hilltop.
Some folks QSO via LEO satellites.
My first bough HF rig was an Icom IC-735. It was fine and all. Sold it to a friend and bought a Yaesu FT-897, as it had 6m, 2m and 70cm SSB and used it for 2m and 70cm contesting.
I still have it and feel that it's good enough of a base rig for myself.
But I operate quite little HF.
My current most used radio is my AR-8200 scanner and Wouxun kg-uvd2p 70MHz/435Mhz dualbander.
Building a mcHF by M0NKA. It's a small portable HF rig that's SDR based. and a kit.
Also working on my own versiPost too long. Click here to view the full text.