"Lockrdg" wrote in message
...
I am looking for suggestions as
to which hand-held transcievers I might looking into buying.


I have the older Icom IC-A22 but I have user (or rather tried to use) the
VOR feature on it and consider it nearly useless for serious usage. If I
were to buy one today I would probably go for one of the smaller/lighter
Vertex units.

I have tried a bunch of different ones (old and new Icom, Yaesu, Vertex and
an old King) and to a first order approximation they have similar
sensitivity and power output. I did try making an entire flight (ground,
tower, then approach control, tower and finally ground) using the Icom and
it went completely smoothly with no one saying I was difficult to read etc.
Key: make sure to get and use the headset adapter. For my Icom I also got
the alkaline battery pack so if the NiCds go dead I have a backup which has
a very long shelf life. You can also buy NiMH packs now for them for about
the same price it would cost you to get new cells for an old pack.

While it is possible to program these units ahead of time I find it easier
to just enter the frequency on the keypad or it is really rough up there to
use the knob to change frequency (slowly, though).