Just getting back into the sats and I am looking to purchase a hand held.. Not sure which one, any suggestions? Cross band full duplex I would like and it appears that the Icom W32A seems to be the choice of many..

The other choice is the Kenwood TH-D7(g). In additoiin to FM voice, it can also do APRS packet via satellite with the built-in APRS TNC and displays.

Next month, ANDE and RAFT amateur Satellites will be launched on the space shuttle and both not only carry an APRS digipeater for HT to HT digipeating, but they also carry a packet-to-voice synthesizer. This means you will be able to enter a text APRS message into your TH-D7(g) HT and when the ANDE or RAFT pass over, and your packet is successful, then the satellite will SPEAK your message.

This mode was designed to let those with only an HT (without APRS) at least hear something besides packets when doing a school demo of these satellites.

Two caveats however:

1) ANDE goes to sleep when not in use, and each wakeup starts the pass with defaults. Thus someone on the West coast will have to logon and activate the Voice Synthesizer. Also ANDE runs on dry-cells only and so we want to limit battery usage to last as long as we can.

2) RAFT is only a 5" cubesat and its solar panels cannot support this VOICE FM downlink very long. So we will have to play this by ear.

Bob, WB4APR US Naval Academy Satellite Lab.