Like several other ETS members, I'm a licensed amateur radio operator. I haven't been very active in recent years, but I'm getting back into the hobby and I spent some time thinking about what the right radio would be for my needs.

The first requirement is for an HT(*). My current HT is over 20 years old and while it still works well with good audio, only aftermarket batteries are available and I'm not getting great life with them. The size of an HT means I'm more likely to have it when I need it for emergencies. It's easy to have a better antenna and more power in a mobile rig, but I can't afford one right now.

HTs have limited range, due to frequency, antennas and power -- although with the right frequency and antenna you can reach a thousand miles or more with 5 watts of CW(**) or PSK31. If I were preparing for a month-long expedition in the middle of nowhere, I might be looking for a battery-powered portable HF rig capable of serious DX. That would be cool but my needs are for something more portable. I've rarely been camping anywhere that I couldn't raise a fellow ham with my HT, usually via a local repeater.

My next requirement was for 2M, which is the primary band I use. 70cm is a nice-to-have. 1.25M is another nice-to-have; I've never worked that band before but there are some repeaters in my area and it would be fun to try.

My next requirement was for wideband receive. One should not expect a ham HT to receive shortwave as well as a dedicated portable receiver, much less a full stationary HF rig, but that's not my purpose. With wideband receive, I can listen to weather radio, local emergency services, local and shortwave news broadcasts, CB radio and other services.

In other words, I wanted a radio that could do a lot of things reasonably well, rather than one that does one thing spectacularly.

The HTs out there with wideband receive are all tribanders, so it was easy to find one that transmits on 2M, 70cm and 1.25M. There's a few tribanders with 6M capabilities, but 6M doesn't make sense without a repeater or a different antenna setup than I'd like to have.




(* -- non-hams call this form factor "walky-talky", hams call it "handy-talky" or HT)

(** -- CW stands for continuous wave, the old-timey Morse code communication used by many hams for DX [long distance] communication today. PSK31 is a low-bandwidth text communications mode that's a lot more like radio-based instant messaging)