Icom IC T22a compared to UV5r and UV82 Baofeng portables

[Carl]

  For the last week one of my minions has carried THREE hand held radios about with him as he did daily chores IN HIS AUTO and with factory,extra length and a mobile antenna to swap the radios onto.He also had one of my BIG STICK antennas to drag ,on a rope,some 30 feet into a tree as a test .

The radios all produced about the same power and audio quality on all the different antennas.

Reception on the radios was the big difference as the ICOM T22 a was noticeably better than the Chinese made talkies as it has better selectivity and a little better sensitivity. The verdict....China talkies are usually just fine until under the worst signal conditions and then the increased quality and filtering of the higher cost radios is better. I tend to think the cost of radio and accessories of the UV82 Baofeng gives it the edge of other China talkies ,especially the variations of the UV5 family and the FM commercial receiver plus flashlight is often very handy to have in one device.

Note ,just one battery for the IC T22a radio cost me more than TWO complete UV82 radios with charger ,battery,and program cables.

[Smurf Hunter]

Like many things, from the comfort of your home things look good. I encourage amateurs to volunteer at public service events, like parades, marathons, etc.
While these aren't real emergencies, the communications and test of the gear is real.

From my house, a mobile radio with blown finals putting out only a few hundred miliwatts will hit the 2 big local repeaters.  That is not a valid test of a radio of course

It's when you're working simplex, outdoors, in the wind/rain/cold, and can operate the HT wearing gloves that you learn what makes a radio acceptable or great.

[idelphic]

YT'er Alec Steele, a UK Blacksmith taught me the saying:

"Buy once, Cry once."

I had a Wouxon and a Baofeng,.. but have since sold both.  My brother has a Baofeng UV-8, and recently the charge base went up in smoke melting base.  He now has a radio that he has to buy another base for...  Yea,.. just another $10 or so on Amazon.. but still.

[Smurf Hunter]

I don't accept the argument that baofengs are particularly difficult to manually program. Any new radio has it's quirks. I just got an FT60 last month, and to set the PL tone freq, tone must first be enabled.  Obviously I wouldn't attempt to operate without that also set, but so many other radios allow you to set them in any sequence.  I wasted 30 minutes on that.

Show me any HT that an unfamiliar use can quickly and intuitively program into a repeater offset, tone and save into a memory channel.