"Jim Weir" wrote:
About 6 months ago, I had to make a corporate decision as to
whether to carry
Vertex/Yaesu or Icom handhelds in the product line. After a hell of
a lot of
work and research, I settled on Vertex. THe reasons would take me
an hour to
lay out, so I won't.

Yaesu/Vertex is my choice.

I like my Yaesu also, but mainly due to its compactness. But its
compactness means a tiny speaker for less audio capability, and its
almost "5W of peak envelope power" for transmit is misleading. A
battered old Narco, brick-sized handheld I have (HT-8xx series, and
with more battery power) has nice, loud audio, and though spec'd at
minimum 1.5W of carrier transmit power, mine measures almost twice
that on most of the band, and significantly more than the carrier
power of the Yaesu. It's the one I prefer to toss in the airplane for
backup, whereas the Yaesu is just fine for airport bumming to
eavesdrop on communications and occasionally needling certain people
on unicom.

Fred F.