Hi.
After reading the below paragraph in an online article I am worried about
burning out my ht. It's the only rig I have now. I want to get a mobile to
use as a base station but it's not in the budget right now. I would like to
know what other's think. here is the snip from the article.
 
HAND HELD DUTY CYCLE LIMITS

If you subject today's HTs to frequent full power, 5w transmissions of
several minutes duration they overheat and the final power transistors may
fail prematurely. Kenwood and Yaesu state in their service manuals that
their HTs are rated for 20% duty cycle at their maximum RF output, or 30
seconds of transmit to 2 minutes of standby. After I first got my license,
I burned up three sets of "finals" in less than a year with long winded
QSOs using a Radio Shack HTX-202 which produced 8w when powered at 13.8V
from my auto cigarette lighter plug! When the warranty ran out, I replaced
it with a Kenwood TH-22 and repeated the same result. Kenwood's Virginia
Beach service center politely admonished me that I was "exceeding the
recommended duty cycle" and should buy a mobile. I followed their advice
and am satisfied with my two Kenwood mobiles, but I sought out other HTs
and pass that advice along.
 
Thanks, 73's.
 
Darren Duff.

amateur radio station KK4AHX.