On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 18:08:19 -0400, Rex Tincher
wrote:

On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 00:12:21 GMT, "mad amoeba" wrote:

snip
As far as I understand this is an handheld ham radio

So it requires a ham radio license. Scroll down the page at
http://www.arrl.org/hamradio.html
for info on getting a ham license.

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?

Yes. Except that 2 meter and 440 MHz radios, especially small ones,
have limited range of only a few miles. They depend on repeaters to
relay their messages long distances, and the repeaters run on electric
power.

How do you define "a few miles"? Like I said in another post, I can
go 18 miles on my 7 Watt 2 Meter HT. Put a decent antenna on it and I
can talk a lot further. Our club repeater has over a 50 mile range
and only puts out 25 Watts.
Depending on usage, our repeater can go 4 or 5 days with no outside
power.

KB9WFK


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

"You are behaving like a troll, disguising your attacks as reasonable
discussion."
'Alan Connor'