Johnny, you made a great effort for a very thorough review. Preppers bristle when hams knock Baofeng, but there are a couple good reasons, and few reviewers address them. The reason their receivers act squirrely or don’t work at all sometimes is because they’re very easily overloaded by non-ham signals. Transmit modulation is often low, which is a real issue if you need to be heard in an emergency. And third, several I’ve had on a spectrum analyzer did not achieve their claimed level of suppression of spurious emissions, or even the legal minimum, potentially interfering with users on other bands. Some of the 8 watts the Baofeng may show on a wattmeter is likely going out on the 288 MHz band, used by military aviation here in the US, or on 70 cm, where it may be strong enough to bring up repeaters there while you operate on 2m. That’s wasted power, and a potentially serious interference issue. The established Japanese brands (Yaesu, Icom, Kenwood, Alinco) simply don’t have this issue, even on the radios they manufacture in China. I’d consider an FT-60R, if my 25-year-old FT-50R wasn’t still performing like new. When you own and use a radio this long, you can do anything needed in an emergency from memory, and I like that. I don’t know if there will ever be any 25-year-old Baofengs! 73 – AE4KR