To add links to other sites you need to do two things.

1. Create new links entries, using the Link icon in the dashboard. The default category is “Blogroll” as this is designed to link related blogs.  You can add new category codes for your links if you wish. This enables you to display a separate set of links for each category.  Examples of categories might be “friend’s links”, “AR general”, “SOTA links” “VHF sites” etc, depending on your interests.  If you don’t think you need lots of categories, you can start with all categorised “Blogroll” by default and split them up later as you expand your site.
2. Go to Appearance > Widgets.  On that page you see many icons for the various widgets.  On the right hand side of the page is a list of the widgets already added to your page layout.  You need to add the Links widget to that group. To do that, click on the icon for Links and move it across to the column on the right.  You can position the new widget in the place you want it, ie. at the top, at the bottom or somewhere in the middle.  I suggest leaving the Meta group at the bottom as visitors to your site won’t need those links.