I rarely use it nowadays, as the number of VHF repeaters in our country is slowely diminishing. I bought the CRT Electro UV to replace it, as that is capable of UHF as well.
My main hand held portable radio is the Baofeng UV-82. It is a simple and cheap radio.
It has two channels (A and B) where you can listen to separate frequencies. One of the nicest features is that it also has two PTT-buttons, one for channel A and one for channel B. This allows you to easily switch between the two. Just by the press of a button.
The CRT Electro UV is my latest transceiver. It covers both the 2m and 70cm bands.
I got it to work the local and national repeaters without having to fire up my main radio, and to use it from the car when traveling.
It took me a while to figure out how the radio works, especially the menu-system. There seem to be two separate menus: the quick menu, and the detailed menu. Once in the detailed menu, it is difficult to get back to the quick menu.
The Yaesu FT-897 is my main radio. It is an all-mode, all-band transceiver, and can generate 100Watt on most bands.
The bands it supports are 160-10m, 6m, 2m, 70cm, and it can do all modes (SSB, AM, FM, CW, Digi) on all those bands.
I bought this radio second hand years ago. It still works fine. I use it most often when on HF, because the 100W output gets me heard much better than the 10W of my Xiegu.
