Hand Held Marine Radio Suggestions / Advice needed

[goose89]

I'm in the market for a marine band radio. I've never owned either a permanent mount of hand held before. I'm not to keen on mounting an antennae on my boat, and am leaning towards a hand held model.

Any words of wisdom on features I absolutely need, or that you've found very helpful, brands / models, or what not to get are appreciated in advance.

[Fishing Junky]

Just make sure it has the weather channel options on it. Icom is a good brand. Good luck, Junky....

[overdalimit]

Hand held will limit you to about 1 mile in range while a boat mounted unit will get you 5-7 miles range.

[Bandit]

Ya, I would bite the bullet and mount an antenna. I think you will be unhappy with the handheld unit. Make sure when you do you get an 8 footer, the 3 footers just don't cut it.

[Capt. Don*]

My experience with handhelds has been a maximum of about five mile range on open water, 25-30 miles with a fixed mount radio. Remember that VHF is line of sight, so best performance is on open water to another boat. I always have a hand held on board, they can come in handy. If you are on smaller bodies of water and don't need to talk across many miles, it will do fine. I am partial to Icom, but I've had good service from Standard Horizon. One feature to look for is if you can use regular AA batteries as well as the rechargable battery. This can come in handy if you don't have power available to recharge for a few days.

[lindy rig]

Looking at getting one of these, despite the limited range. I mainly want it for the weather channel. When discussing range, is the weather channel broadcast on a different system?

In other words, if the range is 1-5 miles with a handheld (for voice transmittal) can you still get weather broadcasted from further way?

[marine_man]

I'm pretty sure that they're (the national weather service) allowed to broadcast at a higher power, and therefore you would get more range out of that signal.

marine_man