What's the best handheld radio these days?

Ended up w the ICOM M24

According to the west marine guy coast guard uses ICOM, is military vs marine specs

I got the m24 mostly because it's compact It also floats and flashes if you drop it overboard, a nice thing for the yardsale situations


Hopefully wont ever need to use the thing but you never know

Always see little boats slugging it out in conditions on the northside, if youre out there enough the odds are pretty good you'll come across people in the water

I've seen two boats flip, my friend was in a 20 ft whaler that endo'ed under the gate, and I salvaged a 28 ft boat, don't know what happened to the crew on that one

also watched a boat explode in a ball of flame one July 4th, some geniuses lighting fireworks on a boat powered by gasoline

I'm not generally near any kayaks so never expected to watch one sink

Anyway shit happens

Good choice.  ICOM is pretty much all the Gov't contracts use.

Which W.M. store did you go to?

I went down to SJ only because I was already down at FW to reline my reels

Work with Les at the store?

Don't know the guys name

Was an Asian guy, very helpful and knew a lot about specs, practical issues etc

Since I'm not chatting w people or checking in w boats about where the fish are and all that, decision has to do mostly w things like what will work reliably, not be a pain in the --- to carry around etc

Not interested in fancy stuff, although this one has that flasher that seems like it could come in handy if you were stuck out in the dark, which has happened to me a couple of times

The situation last week could have ended up that way if we were just a little farther up the coast and conditions ratcheted up the way they tend to there

I.e. currents running against us, a big swell rolled in etc

As it was we got in w light left but didn't get the kayak on the car until 9:15

I know that place pretty well and things could have easily spun out of control, as it was we had luck on our side and I would say we squeaked by based on that and the fact the guy had a good wetsuit and both of us being used to rough water

Then again, the majority of carcasses the coastguard fishes out of the ocean once belonged to middle aged men

Don't know the guys name

Was an Asian guy, very helpful and knew a lot about specs, practical issues etc

That was Les.  He's very helpful and knows his stuff.  If it's a topic he's not 100% confident with, he'll let you know that too.

My Icom just broke. It was stuck on scan, then I just pushed the transmit button and now it's just stuck on 13. Does anybody know if I can fix it? I push all the buttons and nothing happens.

I've found their warranty dept. to be top notch.  Might be worth reaching out to them.  Have you tried to remove the battery & see if this "resets" the internal memory/board.electronics?  Or do you think it's actually a "stuck button"?

  I don't think its a stuck button. No buttons did anything when it was scanning before I pushed the transmit button. The scan wasn't all the channels that were programmed into the scan either. So the chatter I like to listen to here where I live near Emeryville (67,69,14,16) wasn't there. It stopped on 15 a few times, sounded like another 16. Then I pushed the transmit button and it stopped on 13.
  Thank you for the tip that they have good customer service. It's probably not under warranty because it's about 6 yrs. old. I  pulled the battery out a while ago and it didn't reset.

Just looked on the Icom site for repair fees.  They have a $92.40/hour with 1 hour min. fee.  Half-that if they don't find anything wrong.  For that (nearly) $100, you could just about replace the radio or be about 1/2 the cost of a new high-end radio.

Now you got me worried about the radio I just bought

Requirement number one is that the thing is reliable, hope your issue is a fluke and not a pattern

My Icom would receive but couldn't transmit. I took it back to West Marine and it was off warranty but they sent it to Icom free of charge for me. Two weeks later I picked it up at the store and was charged nothing. Works great. Had a broken diode. I do recommend buying the extended warranty. They all break sooner or later, even Icoms and SH's. Dry bags prolong the life of a VHF and improve transmission when in the water.

one of the things that sold me on ICOMs was that they're military vs marine spec

Given what they're for, these things shouldn't go dysfunctional at all

Guess I will try mine out, once again feel like you're going on faith rather than certainty, pretty much my experience w electronics all around

Two GPS units have failed for me now, one when I was 4 miles offshore in heavy fog

Nothing has fundamentally changed in the industrial design of VHF's in decades (I'd guess).  There are a few more bells and whistles, but in terms of durability and waterproofness, again, I'd guess they are the same as they ever were.

Many VHF's will have an IPX7 rating.  Think about that for a sec, that's only immersion for 30 minutes at a depth of 1 meter.  That isn't very waterproof, is it?

Years ago, I chatted up a guy at a West Marine.  He was in charge of testing handheld VHF units for all of WM.  His advice was to get the extended warranty and bag it.  Go figure, I never do either.  He claimed that every unit they tested failed their "lifetime" tests.  He didn't share with me the details of what "lifetime" were, but this fact alone should be worrisome.

ICOM72 user here, same unit for 4-5 years now and no problems.

-Allen