Ihave used old motorola radios maxon ,kenwood, general electic and yeasu commerical radios with good results. most of these radios need to be programed using computer software and programming cable, The yeasu ft 2500ametuer radio has a fairly broad band recieve and its practically bulletproof, one quick mod{cut green wire} and your on , these radios are out of production so you'll have to find one second hand, The Icom v8000 is still avialable and its a 70 watt radio the 2500 is 50 watt, if you want to run an amp stick to the commercial ones they are alot better than the ones designed for ametuer radio. Steve44