Hey Scott, I'm a little less of a newbie than you, but picked up a Astron RS-35M for a base station set-up (& whatever future endeavors) from Ham Radio Outlet and have been very satisfied with it. Plenty of power for two radios, in case you ever decide to put up a repeater. Seems to be recommended by a lot of HAMs. https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-016694 Regards, Dan