Hi Lou,
When I finally do buy something it will probably be a Kenwood or the new 
Elecraft.

I bought a Yaesu VR-500 one of those little dc to daylight hand held 
receivers. I can do the basic functions but I had to have a sighted ham 
friend program some of the menu options for me.

Menu options 33 and 34 are hidden functions and the one commercial 
programming software for the radio will not handle those.

Bob Parnasus make a free-ware program for handling the options and memories 
on that radio but apparently you have to download a few complex drivers to 
make it work.

Then there is the serial port to usb delimma.

I like this little radio but unless Yaesu gets their access act together I 
won't be buying any more of their products.

Eric
KU3I