Yeah, no problem. Most ham radios are set up to use 12 volts so they can be installed in a vehicle. They don’t need a lot of power. But if you’re using it at home with normal 120v power (from the power company or from a generator) you actually have to get a power supply to feed it 12 volts. This is a cheap one: https://www.amazon.com/Regulated-Converter-Interface-Amplifiers-TOPPOWER-PS1330A/dp/B0CZP5C2PY?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&gQT=1

You could also hook it up to a 12v battery and use the generator to charge the battery.

I didn’t mean to imply one was better than the other, just that someone interested in getting into it should know it’s not all the same.

I actually prefer VHF/UHF, there’s just something about the mobility of it that I like so much more. But I live in an area where storms or tornadoes are the main threat, not hurricanes. If we have a disaster, we just need to coordinate, or maybe ask for help from the next town.

If something widespread hits us, I know guys who often get up at 3am because some HF band is supposed to be open. I’ll let them handle that.

Something that should maybe be pointed out about ham radio is that there’s local ham radio (VHF/UHF) and there’s long distance ham radio (HF). People keep mentioning that ham radio can reach long distances, even other continents, and that’s true but that’s the harder, more expensive HF side of ham radio.

When you get your first ham license, you are limited to VHF/UHF bands and a little slice of the 10 meter HF band that isn’t very useful. Even if it were useful, most radios are either VHF/UHF only ($100-300, $30 for a lower powered handheld radio), HF only ($500 and up), or all bands (well over $1000.)

It’s hard to talk about range because it always depends on location, but VHF/UHF has a range that should cover your town/city and maybe enough to reach the next town, maybe enough to reach outside the disaster zone, depending on the disaster. VHF/UHF only needs a simple, cheap antenna that you can stick to anything and it’ll just work, more or less.

HF generally requires big antennas that take a lot of tweaking and/or other expenses to work right.

CB radio is very low power and limited range. I had a CB in my Jeep for offroading. It wasn’t an ideal installation or an ideal antenna, but it was basically what most people driving a normal vehicle and not really serious about CB-ing would install.

It was good enough for the trail where I was 100 yards from friends but going down the interstate listening to trucks, I was basically limited to trucks I could see within a half mile or so.

With a 2 meter ham radio, the most common band that even beginners can use, and a lot simpler to install than CB, I can talk 20 miles fairly easily, twice that to reach some repeaters in the mountains.

Almost everyone using Linux installed it. Almost no one using Windows installed it.