Tom - KG6SEA - Northern California

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• This is my first radio. Since I can only purchase one radio, that narrows the choices down to an HT. I know the bands I will need are 2m and 70cm. I also would like a wideband receiver, so I can do some scanning without having to carry around a second box. A few popular HT's on the market include the Icom IC-T90A, Kenwood TH-F6A, Yaesu VX-5R, and the VX-7R. I did a lot of comparison shopping on these radios. There are pros and cons for each model. The Kenwood seems to be the most popular choice among hams, it seems to be reliable and has the biggest battery. The Icom would be a nice choice, since I already own a Icom IC-R5, I wouldn't have to learn a new interface. The VX-5R is very popular as well. It is small, and is loaded with features. But at the end, I chose the VX-7R for several reasons.
• Looks - It looks rugged. A lot folks on the web seem to disagree. There seems to be some reliability problems with the early VX-7R units. Hopefully this is solved now at its been out for a year. The chassis is die cast magnesium, with rubberized grips. It fits nicely in the palm. It also features two dials on the top - 1 for volume and another for menu selection and tuning. Also nice is that the headset jack is on top. On the other hand, that jack takes a special screw-in plug which you can only purchase from Yaesu. I also find the keys a little easier to push than the VX-5R and the IC-T90A. Those units are a little too small for my fingers. The VX-7R even has a built-in LED flashlight which is activated by pressing the EMG key for 1 second :-)

• Power - the VX-7R delivers 5 Watts on both 2m and 70cm. That's more than the other units I've considered. It also puts out 5 Watts on 10m and 300mW on 220MHz. I don't have the antennas for those bands yet, so I haven't been able to make any contacts on those bands, especially 220MHz. It also has a decent 1300mAH battery, which can do a whole day's worth of scanning.
• Dual receive - I also like the dual receive feature, where I can monitor two frequencies at the same time. In practice, I have found that dual receive isn't perfect. When doing dual receive, on some frequencies, the squelch would open, but checking on my Icom, there is no signal there. On the flip side, while dual scanning, sometimes the S-meter shows signal, but the squelch won't open. When I double check on my Icom, there is signal there with the right tone squelch. This seems to be a well known problem with Yaesu HT's.
• Stealthy antenna - I pair up my VX-7R with the Maldol MH-511 stubby antenna (if you consider 4" nonflexible antenna a stubby). This antenna pulls in a bit more signal than the Maldol MH-209SMA, but the key feature is that I can also transmit. With the MH-209, I can't hit any repeaters. For any real work, I switch over to my Comet SMA-24, or my base antenna.
• PC Programming - the VX-7R is PC programmable, which is a good thing. I find that it takes many more keystrokes to do the same thing on the Yaesu as compared to the Icom. For instance, even though the VX-7R has a dial and a keypad, I am forced to cycle through tone squelch with the MAIN and SUB keys, which act like arrow keys. Many things which should be settable through the dial or keypad are done with the MAIN and SUB keys, which boggles my mind. Okay, back to the subject of PC programming. By purchasing the right cables and downloading the excellent and free VX7 Commander written by Jim Mitchell KC8UNJ, you can do amazing things to the VX-7R. The free software can even open up freeband TX without doing any hardware mods, if you're into that sort of thing ;-)

73