Great for the go-kit

[K3MRI]

I know all the reasons that Baofeng radios get no love. I admit that before owning two of them myself, I was one of those. But I have yet to find a more affordable way of having redundancy capabilities. My go-kit has two Baofengs which cost me less than half of one mainstream HT. Not sure if that's fair to higher end manufacturers but I'm not rich and having the ability to have emergency HTs for a ridiculously low price is attractive to me. And yes, they are becoming increasingly reliable.

So I guess my question is whether or not you own a Baofeng and if so, for what use.

Started a poll.

[KD3Y]

I own the Baofeng UV-5R
Mainly take it on the boat when I go diving.  I can hit the repeater with it from 13 miles offshore.
The benefit is if it gets dropped overboard or one of my clumsy buddies drops a scuba tank on it, I don't cry because it's only $25 VS my Yaesu HT.

[K3MRI]

My only reservation these days is that the Baofeng are made in China and that I’m trying to ‘cut down’. You could say I am on a bit of a China Diet. I wish another manufacturer would come out with something, if not as inexpensive, at least a little bit cheaper than the good stuff. I’d be happy with HTs in the $60 to $99 range.

[KD3Y]

Well I bought the Yaesu FT-65 at DX Engineering for $92

I thought that was a pretty good price for a brand name not-chinese dual band HT.  So far its been a good radio.

 

[K3MRI]

Thanks! I don’t want to hijack the thread into Yaesu so I’ll stop (after this comment 😇). Just wanted to say that it’s been a while since I looked at any of the HT offerings including Baofeng and, yes, Yaesu. I think I’ll spend some time seeing what’s out there right now. The bad new is that this is inevitably going to cost me 💵 as I will indubitably come across something I like 😎