I'm not a ham, so take my comment with a grain of salt. But as an SWL for several decades, I've done more than my share of monitoring the ham bands, HF bands especially, including the CW sections.
If I were to go Tech, I'd get a rig that would at least work on 10 meters and 6 meters. Even lower if you want to go HF -- Techs have access to some CW portions of the HF bands. You don't have to send or receive super fast. Some guys are slow CW keyers. There even is some sort of slow CW club (SKCC? not sure), and it would be a great, simple way to see a lot of what ham radio has to offer. I've heard a lot of slower CW on 40 m especially.
If you're not into the idea of code, 10 meters SSB will start opening up more and more over the next few year. 6 probably also. The antennas are reasonably small.
Of course, there's the handheld VHF-UHF route, too. Or both.
Good luck.
If I were to go Tech, I'd get a rig that would at least work on 10 meters and 6 meters. Even lower if you want to go HF -- Techs have access to some CW portions of the HF bands. You don't have to send or receive super fast. Some guys are slow CW keyers. There even is some sort of slow CW club (SKCC? not sure), and it would be a great, simple way to see a lot of what ham radio has to offer. I've heard a lot of slower CW on 40 m especially.
If you're not into the idea of code, 10 meters SSB will start opening up more and more over the next few year. 6 probably also. The antennas are reasonably small.
Of course, there's the handheld VHF-UHF route, too. Or both.
Good luck.