What is the difference between handheld, mobile and a base radio?

Foundations of Amateur Radio

If you've ever been in the market for a new radio, and truth be told, who isn't, you'll find yourself faced with a bewildering array of options varying from obvious to obscure and everything in between. At the obvious end of the scale are things like price, bands and transmit power and at the other end are things like Narrow Spaced Dynamic Range, which you'll find explained by Rob NC0B on his sherweng.com website where he's been publishing receiver test data for many decades.

One of the more subtle options you'll need to consider are handheld, mobile or base radio.

This is harder than you might think, since radios are increasing in functionality every time you wake up and if you look long enough, you'll discover that they're getting smaller at the same rate. Once upon a time you could just look at the size of a radio and define it as belonging in one or other category, but that's no longer a useful distinction. For example, my PlutoSDR is a tiny device, fits in my pocket, but there's no way I'd consider it a handheld, or even a mobile radio.

You might think that a bigger box has more stuff inside, costs more and performs better.

For example, the Drake R-4C receiver and companion T-4XC transmitter require external power and were once rated by the ARRL as very good. In reality the Drake R-4C performed terribly in a CW contest, incidentally, that was what caused Rob to start testing radios in 1976. That receiver and transmitter manage to cover 80m, 40m, 20m, 15m and 10m and together weigh in at 14.3 kg. They're considered a base radio.

The Yaesu FT-817, runs on batteries, weighs in at just over a kilogram and can be carried with a shoulder strap. It comes as a single device and covers many more bands than the Drake transmitter and receiver do, it would be considered a mobile or even portable radio. Obviously it would be hard to jam a Drake into your car or strap it to your belt, but does that mean that you cannot use an FT-817 as the base radio in your shack?

In case you're curious, the slightly beefier brother to the FT-817, the mobile FT-857d, is sitting on my desk as my current base radio. Has been for years.

So why do manufacturers continue to make this distinction between handheld, mobile and base radio? One look at the nearest radio catalogue will tell you that it's not based on either performance or price, not even close. You can buy a handheld with more functionality for the same price as a mobile radio and that same is true when you compare a mobile radio to a base radio.

Radios vary in price from $20 to $20,000. A cynical person would suggest that pricing is based around extracting the most money from your pocket, but a more charitable explanation might be that physical size dictates things like the number of buttons you can fit on a radio, how many connectors can be accessed before the radio flies off the desk from the weight of the coax hanging off the box, how big is the display and other such limitations.

I'm not being glib when I use the word charitable, since much of modern transceiver design revolves around software which can pretty much fit in any box. Using external computers, neither buttons nor a display are needed, leaving external connectors, which if we're being really honest could all fit in a box that would fit in your pocket.

At this point you might wonder if handheld, mobile or base has any meaning at all. As I said, in most cases it doesn't. There's really only one place left where this matters, and that's when you have access to strictly limited space and power if you need to put the radio in your pocket or cram it into your car.

For your home shack, the distinction is unhelpful for most, if not all, amateurs.

Don't believe me? The Yaesu FT-710 currently ranks fourth on Rob's Sherwood Engineering Receiver Test Data List. It's a quarter the size of the top radio and it's sold as a "Base/Portable Transceiver". Yaesu calls it "Compact". It might not fit in the dashboard of my car, but it will fit on the folding table we use during field days.

That isn't an exception either. The Elecraft KX3 is the smallest radio on the first page of Rob's Receiver Test Data list. It fits in your pocket.

Before you start collecting statistics for each radio, I should point out that the more you know about this hobby, the harder this process becomes, so be careful. That said, if you have a massive list of anything to choose from, a new amateur radio, pet food, car, what to have for dinner, whatever, here's a process that will guarantee a result.

It works by eliminating one item at a time until you're left with your preference.

To start, grab the first two items on your list and pick the best one between the two. Ignore everything else, just those two items. You're going to fret about the definition of "best", but don't worry, since every time you do this, you'll have a different idea. All you're doing is saying, all things being equal, between these two options, which one do I prefer. No need to describe why, just pick one. In picking one, you've removed one option from the list.

Now, compare the winner to the next item on the list, again, ignore everything else and pick one and remove the other. Keep doing this until you run out of items. You'll end up with the single option that wins, for whatever reason, from the entire list.

Now, about that radio. All I need is the next paid project.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB