Quote:
Five watts does just fine with a decent antenna.

We're talking about HF, not an HT on VHF/UHF, so let me comment. Five watts in an emergency cannot be counted on for HF. Second, a decent antenna after Katrina was not to be had by the people who were living there.

My suggestion is to read After-Action Reports by people who were in the destruction zone after Katrina went through. There's one at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hfpack/message/28304
If you can't get to that, here's their comment on wattage:
Quote:
- Even 20w HF was not usable last week due to flares, etc. It took full 100w
Mobiles with decent bases to operate out of VHF range. 817's are fun, and make
decent monitoring receivers, but you cannot count on them to get through for
emergency ops. For our use, the 897 and 706 type radios were the most desired,
as they could easily switch between
bands/freqs. Paired with a 2nd-3rd gen dual band mobile (decent power,
etc) it was perfect. You could monitor multiple VHF nets or HF as needed.


Opinions vary; that's what makes horse races. But I would choose an HT for local VHF/UHF operation and never an FT-817. That an FT-817 has all HF bands and modes is not icing on the cake when you also have to carry around an workable HF antenna, a tuner, and a bag to carry all the stuff in, and with all that, you're limited to five watts on HF. Too much crap, not enough oomph.