I upgraded to the Kenwood TH-D74 from the Baofeng for the simple reason that i wanted the ability to actually specify a frequency that i hadn't pre-programmed w

I upgraded to the Kenwood TH-D74 from the Baofeng for the simple reason that i wanted the ability to actually specify a frequency that i hadn't pre-programmed when out in the field. Doing that on a baofeng is nigh-impossible. the APRS, GPS, and D-Star are just icing on the cake. the Baofengs are cheap but absolutely suck when it comes to usability. With the Kenwood i can deploy to help our local CERT team, and not worry if they say "oh we changed the band plan... use this frequency" With the baofeng it was... "um... er.... well that sucks..." Admittedly the Kenwood doesn't have a beginner friendly price but I don't know of any handheld that lets you type in a random frequency without wanting to kill yourself that IS cheap. I'd love to hear about it if anyone knows of one.