If you're looking for an incredibly full-featured Ham Transceiver, look no
further than the Yaesu-817. 2-meter and 6-meter for local use, and then
pretty much everything else for long distance. All you need is a good
portable antenna and tuner and you'll never be out of touch. It's a "legal"
QSL radio with it's maximum 5watt output and can be set up as a base station
(many people have) or slip it into it's case and sling it over your shoulder
for true portability.
But by the way, you need to get your Ham license before you get one.
Reputable Ham dealers will NOT sell you a transceiver unless you furnish
your call sign that matches the address you want them to mail it to.

MJC

"mad amoeba" wrote in message
. net...
I was affected by the recent blackout in North East. That got me thinking
of
how would
one communicate during such an event. Electricity including phones were
out.
Cellular phones didn't work either. So the only way of receiving
informaiton
was by radio.
My old Sony wm-gx670 did quite nicely. But what if I would need to
communicate with
my relatives or even cops to let them know of an emmergency. If
telephone/cellular/internet
are not available what are my other options? Let's say people I want to
communicate with
are more than several miles away in an urban area. That makes CB radio
useless--right? So
then as far as I understand using ham radio is my only option. With that
you
can either get in
touch with your relatives directly, provided they have ham radio as well,
or
you can call
some person in an area without blackout and tell them to call
police/ambulance etc if that's
what you need.

Not knowing much myself about scanners/shortwaves/hams myself I want to
ask
you guys
with more experience if the below piece of equipment is what I need.

As far as I understand this is an handheld ham radio which also functions
as
a scanner and
can also receive on a shortwave band. So it will allow me to communicate
with people
far away even in urban setting, it is portable and it will also allow me
to
monitor news as
well as police/firefighters etc. Am I right?

Yaesu VX-2R
http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/ht/0176.html

the price is kind of steep but for all-in-one product I would be willing
to
pay it.