Review on 🔧 Waterproof TYT TH-8600 Mini 25W Dual Band Amateur Radio Base – VHF 144-148mhz (2m) UHF 420-450mhz (70cm) – Transceiver with Free Cable by Adam Jenkins

This was the only waterproof dual band VHF/UHF radio. The first impression is good. It's small, looks solid, and comes with a well-protected, splash-proof power cord. Both ends of the battery are protected by fuses in case of a short circuit in the power cord. The end of the radio is also secured. The included programming software and cable worked for me for the first time on a Windows 10 tower computer and it was fine to use cut and paste to program from my Baofeng CHIRP configuration export and seems to work fine for simplex and duplex. It would be great if CHIRP endorsed this radio, but that's in the CHIRP developer community, not TYT. Installation was easy and just like every other mobile transceiver I've installed. Overall it seems well thought out for its primary use in recreational vehicles or on farms. It's value for money and I took advantage of the Revain $20 3-year warranty, just in case. Few things stand out as problems. At first it was locked, with no obvious documentation explaining how to unlock it: Hold down the "LO" button (top left) and the "A/B" button (bottom right) while using the TH-8600 turn on. Also, by default, the microphone up/down buttons are set to volume, not channel or frequency as I expected. It might be possible to change the default, but I haven't figured it out yet. The user manual is good enough for a China radio, but lacks some important details describing the various functions and shortcuts.