The TYT TH-9800 is a 10M/6M/2M/70CM mobile transceiver. This radio is designed to be mobile but can be used as a base. Amazon is the most common supplier of this radio. Over the years the price has fluctuated a bit and is currently around $220.
TX power for this radio is 50w 10m, 6m, and 2m. 70cm tx power is 35w. Each band also has 20/10/5w settings. On maximum power the radio does tend to heat up. This is usually not an issue under normal operation. Once during a very long rag chew this radio did overheat and went into a protection mode. Until the unit cooled down, I was unable to transmit. There was no permanent damage and no issue since.
For programming, I used chirp. There were no issues getting drivers for programming cable. The great thing about chirps is the capability to copy frequency list from other radios. Within 10 minutes after connection the radio was programmed. Make sure to disconnect programming cable before transmitting. If you transmit while the radio is connected to the computer, it will cause distortion in your transmission.
This radio has a cross band repeat feature. With a handy talk, I am capable of receiving the local repeaters but cannot transmit. In the past, I have set the TYT so I could transmit to it from handy talk with a rubber duck and the TH-9800 would repeat the transmission on the repeater frequency. While transmitting in this fashion, identify and tell other operators your cross-banding.
In my area, I have found no 6M and 10M FM activity. One of the reasons I originally chose this radio is because it had 4 bands. After finding no activity, it was kind of disappointing. I can’t blame the radio for this lack of activity and probably should have done more research on the use of the FM in my area.
Overall, I have been very pleased with this radio. After 3 years of daily use, there have been no issues other than the one time overheating. This radio gets more use than all the other radios and barely shows any wear. One possible downfall of this radio is I believe it is also part of the FCC statement recently put out. As the FCC issue unfolds we will revisit this.
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KM4NMP 
I like how someone could be on the .52/2m calling frequency and we could be running a net or on another frequency and can monitor that other frequency, jump over if we hear anyone, let em know what’s up and go right back to what we were doing so quickly and easily. I don’t do much with repeaters, however the cross band function is definitely useful. Programming through the front end is pretty easy if you don’t have chirp. It’s got an AM Rx only setting, and it’s supposed to be able to monitor air band although I have not discovered the secret squirrel code to do that, and I cannot find instructions on this function in the manual. So either that’s faulty information and it can’t Rx airband or I’m just not doing something right. It seems like this radio definitely meets the criteria of the ‘Baofeng Ban’ as it can transmit outside the ham bands. My understanding is you’ve got to have a general license to use 10M FM, so techs are out of luck on that one. I’m interested in trying out the 6m FM, although that’s not too common band/modulation combo. I still need a proper antenna for that band. So right now it’s basically a dual band, and basically being used as a mono band seeing as how 2m is where all the action is. UHF FM around here is really quiet, and I’m sure 6m is too. I think the expanded UHF capability of this radio has a place in prepper communications. In a SHTF scenario it could be used to communicate with anyone using commercial walkie talkies.
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