Mika the Spamkiller wrote in
:

Any suggestions for a good handheld?

Someone gave me a Standard H-262 walkie they'd left in a lazarette and
forgotten about. The screws are rusted and it was awful looking. The
battery pack was toast, so I took it apart and hauled the cells up to
Batteries Plus store here and had the nice boy build me a new pack using
2,500 mAH Ni-metal hydride cells, instead of the cheapassed Ni-Cd crap all
the OEMs use in their $120 battery packs.

The abused Standard fired right up and is now my favorite marine HT! It's
much better than my Garmin 725, easier to operate. Already "rust tested",
I cleaned off the bilge crud and replaced the rusty screws. It takes
almost 2 days to fully charge these monster hydride cells from the little
trickle charger, then you can operate the thing all weekend, 24/7 in normal
use and never hear it start beeping about dead batteries. I'm very
impressed with these Standard/Vertex walkies. Of course, they ARE Yaesu-
made...my favorite ham equipment...so I'm a little prejudiced...(c;

--
Larry