Sorry 'bout gettin' into this thread late but I'm glad to see you've joined the amateur radio family.
For those who haven't yet made the plunge, the first thing to keep in mind is that 90% of ham gear is low-to-middle consumer grade electronics, and as such, is subject to the ills of cost-cutting and throw-away manufacturing mentality. They're also equipped with a whole bunch of useless "geek" features that only complicate and obfuscate the basic programming and operating procedures.
The units that can brag about being Mil-Spec really only meet the basic Mil-Spec 800 requirements, so take that with a grain of salt. The single band units that are based on a manufacturer's commercial units is probably the better buy, but even that isn't always true. I have an ICOM V8000 which I think is a great little radio, and its best feature is that because its based on the commercial rig, it doesn't do anything but 2 meters. It's pretty basic and it works flawlessly. I like it.
Any dual band radio out there by ICOM,Yaesu, Kenwood, etc., is a pretty good unit, and right now the the Yaesu 7800 is the king for features and reliability and audio quality vs money spent. However, for all who play around with or are thinking of getting into ham gear, KEEP THIS IN MIND: in the world of inexpensive radios such as most amateur gear, you cannot judge one model of a particular brand by the performance and reliability of another. As SHINTON posted, the IC207H that he and I both have copies of is a great radio as long as it doesn't start to exhibit some of its quirks. So far mine has been reliable. As for the 208H which replaced it. that model supposedly has eliminated the problems of the 207, but we'll see. And yes, crossband repeat is a great feature so long as you know how to use it, but you have to go to the higher priced units to get that feature.
Antennas, well....how much forward gain do you need? For 99.9% of daily communicating, a shorter unity gain antenna will more than suffice. And to make it more bulletproof where there are trees, get it with a spring, BUT be aware that a spring is a mechanical joint and is subject to joint corrosion and resulting performance deterioration. You'll have to periodically attempt to clean the spring and its set screws to maintain performance, but good luck. I've been in the comm industry for decades and so far I've never bee able to keep any antenna with a spring operating optimally for more than a year or two.
Glad to see you didn't buy into the Comet antenna myth. Comet antennas are great antennas when new, possess a good bandwidth, and are relatively cost effective in the beginning. I even have a couple of 'em. Now that we got past that glowing report, Comet antennas are very stiff so as to not lie down in the wind at 65 MPH, which is why they perform so well on the open road, but in the woods....well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that characteristic is not desirable where there are trees. If you have to ask why you dont see 'em on commercial applications (public safety, business, etc), you've got to go back to that reliability issue under rough conditions.
I realize they have the spring-loaded lay-over joint for garage entry, etc, but are you going to ride around in the woods with your antenna in a position that doesn't allow you to use the radio? That spring loaded joint is an open invitation to corrosion and arcing when it gets contaminated by normal road grime, and there's no way to clean it out because it's not designed to be disassembled. In addition, Comet antennas have a whole bunch of additional component joints, and the more joints you have in a device that's fed 300+ volts at low current (no, I didn't stutter), the more chances you have for joint contamination, dissimilar metal corrosion, micro-arcing, and deterioration both physically and performance-wise.
Larsen NMO 2/70 dual banders with the capsule center load in the rod are subject to the same issues, though they don't have but a couple of joints. On the other hand, the Larsens with the exposed wound coil in the rod dont have any joints at the coil, but the coil will grab every small branch it comes in contact with. That little trait can rip it out of the mount before you can say, "Over," but you can buy it in black and put a nicely trimmed piece of black heat shrink around the coil, and Voila!, the problem is solved, and it doesn't look too bad.
All antennas suffer from these mechanical joint maladies, so the bottom line is that the fewer joints and connections an antenna has, the longer it will perform at its best.
Oh, I use a Larsen NMO 2/70 (black) with the exposed coil center load covered with heat shrink.
