Literally listening to the only station broadcasting right now that I can pick up on my meager baofeng and he is expounding on the virtues of bleaching your pubes so that the carpet matches the drapes. Protip, ladies.
Lemme hop right on getting that technician's license and onto a "list" so I can legally be part of that crowd, but also so that the gov't has a formal record of who and where I am when the shtf and they want to round me up as having the known ability to communicate outside of approved channels.
Yeah... no.
the Baofeng is a nice radio for the price- that's it's only perk. The stock antenna is not the greatest, but there are aftermarket antennas that will improve the reception. But, if you get too big of an antenna, it will burn out the unit, so they don't make a good fixed, base station radio. Your location's topography (mountains or flat) will be the biggest factor to the Baofeng's performance, though.
I really only bought several for short-distance communications (like within a neighborhood) but since it picks up amateur bands I have been listening in to what (little) it will pick up... and I am just wondering what the sales pitch is for getting a ham license based on what (again, little) I am hearing.
A course of study on proper radio theory and operation I think is absolutely well recommended but for most of our needs... the licensing thing just seems like it's inviting unwanted attention. That is 100% my uneducated opinion, obviously.
If your only really interested in listening in, then I wouldn't bother with the license. If you start to get more interested in it, then by all means take the test and get licensed. If your worried about being on a list, you already are- the internet is forever and even this little conversation will be saved for later. The license is more for the assignment of a call sign to your name.
Anyway, if you really want to listen to your local fire/ems, I'd suggest getting an SDR (source derived radio) dongle and use the open source software to get darn near the whole radio spectrum. With the right antennas and sometimes a dual SDR setup for trunked radio systems, you can listen into digital radio communications except if they are scrambled.