got the pair of 1012's the other day,, had some free time yesterday afternoon to play with them, I went out on my deck and was actually able to here some skip on 38 so I grabbed one of my wire 1/2 wave vertical antenna's and went down by the local lake a few minutes from home,, strung up the 1/2 wave wire in a tree about 25' and called out for about an hour,, made 2 contacts to Georgia,, the receive is actually pretty good. battery life with some rechargables was fine after an hour of calling out it was still going strong. output on these was right at 3watts pep on ssb and about 7 pep on am on the battery pack
last night I tried it with a local that is about 2 miles from be, I was able to talk with him no problem from my house to his base with the small rubber duck antenna
I happy with them for what they are!!