Azden AZ-61 reviews

Great HT for what was the only HT out there in the 1990's for 6M only. Very useful to me as a former 6M repeater owner. Great RX / TX audio. Full RF OUT = 5W, LOW RF OUT = 1/2W. (That 5W work great for many 6M leaner amps.) Great speaker mic for it as well, very perky audio. Biggest complaint? That stupid memory writing to program in FREQ's and PL tones that Azden radios have. Don't do it for a while, your manual will be needed. RX will tune to 40MHz, so you can listen to 49MHz activities, plus the fire, highway, gas, and forestry, FREQ's. Now, try finding a replaceable battery for it. Oh yeah, works well with a mobile and base antenna to it, but don't expect to work any DX with the accompanying duck antenna.

In the 1990's it was the only 6M HT game around, and a bit of a novelty rig. Who'd want one? 6M repeater owners / trustees, or if you had 6M 52.525MHz simplex links on your repeater, this was the HT to have. As far as QSO'ing with the supplied duck antenna, forget it, unless you have a 6M guru that lived a couple of miles from you. This HT does work well with mobile and base antennas for 6M FM. The 5W out was also good for 6M FM linear amps, 5W in = 50W out. Great punchy TX and RX audio. RX current draw is about 200mA and TX high power it draws around 1.5A. My biggest gripe is the odd ball Azden memory programing. If you can get yourself past that, then you'll have a great HT. No problems with this HT either, just the NiCAD batteries after 20-some years. Another novelty is that this HT's RX will tune VHF low band 40MHz to catch things like 49MHz HT's, baby monitors, state police, forest rangers, rural fire companies, gas companies, high way companies, etc. Try that with any VHF / UHF HT. For me, this HT is a work horse, but again, a novelty one since it is 6M, but it does it well.