Jerry:

I took a good look at one of these last year.  Unfortunately, your
impressions are correct.  No beeps, no voice, and very menu driven.
Your only hope my be the qsyer from John hansen.  I forget the url, but
someone on this list will have it.

The qsyer is a telephone style keypad which gives you some control of the
rig.  However, this is pretty limited.

If you want a good qrp rig that is almost 100% accessible, get a k2 from
elecraft, with the krc2 option.

You'll spend some serious money, but in return, you get 160 through 10, cw
and ssb, great adjustable filters, one of the quietest and hottest
receivers I've ever used, internal batteries, and optional dsp noise reduction.
When the krc2 is connected, you also get full cw output of every menu, the
entire display, and all but two or three of the pushbutton functions.

For more information go to
http://www.elecraft.com

The rig is a kit, but there are many folks out there who will build for a
nominal fee, and many times for free for the disabled.

These folks deserve our support.  One of the cofounders of the company
(Wayne Burdick) has pledged that all future elecraft radios will have
accessibility built in.
He made good on this with their last rig the kx1.  This is a three band cw
only rig that is extremely portable and 100% accessible right out of the box.

Good luck, and I'll be happy to answer any questions on the k2.

73
At 09:13 PM 10/25/2004 -0400, you wrote:

>I'm looking around for a very portable, qrp rig that will work on all hf
>bands, in all modes and, if possible, on vhf & uhf. I have heard good things
>about the Yaesu 817 but suspect that it would be very difficult to navigate.
>Has anyone any experience with this rig? To my knowledge, it has neither
>voice facilities nor beeps or tones.
>
>Jerry
>
>
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