FYI.
A couple of months ago, I went ahead and purchased the Kenwood V7A and I
love it.  I tried it using cross band repeat but from 2 meters to the 450
band.  It worked, but not as well as desired due to the fact I could not get
my input transmit frequency far enough away from the repeater I normally
operate.  Recently, Alinco came out with a 450 handy talky that runs about a
half a watt on alkaline batteries.  It is called the DJ-S40T if you are
interested and is on the alinco.com website.  If I understand their website
correctly, it runs 500 MW on high power and 2.5 MW on low power.  They have
an external microphone speaker mic for it, an anti theft cable, and an extra
metal hydride battery pack.  These are all accessories.  You can direct
connect to 13.8 volts and run one watt output.  It is very tiny, almost too
tiny for my hand, but it slips in my shirt pocket as slick as a whistle.
They have one just like it for 2 meters, of course.  It isn't work diddly
for a blind person to program alone but it has 100 memories, sub tone, tone
burst, and everything else the big radios have.  It even comes with a sub
signal that you can turn on which is called an experimental mosquito
repeller.  No fooling.  Just what I have always wanted in a ham rig.  It has
a battery saving mode, too.  Anyhow, I got it for one reason and that was to
use it in a remote base mode.  The Kenwood V7A can quickly and easily be set
up to operate in the cross band repeat mode, or in other words, like a
little repeater.  So when I am going to be away from the rig for awhile,
such as when I am watching my grand kids, something I do every day for about
three hours, and when I am out under the tree in my back yard rocking on my
bench swing late in the evenings during the summer when it has cooled off, I
can now use my little handy talky on low power and three double A batteries
and it talks to my Kenwood in the house and repeats to whatever frequency I
select.  It can be simplex or a repeater frequency.  Oh, the cost.  They
sell new from Amateur Electronics Supply for 90 dollars.  As I said, they
have one for 2 meters as well.  They have an automatic shut off mode so if
you forget, you can set it up to two or three hours, or less, and it will
shut itself off.  It does beep a lot when you are setting different
frequencies but it would still take some doing to try and program it
yourself.  As I said, I purchased it for one purpose and that was to
function as a remote base.  Since I only use it for that one purpose, I have
it set up for two frequencies.  One is a repeater on 450 linked to our two
meter repeater and another frequency when I want to use it as a remote base
system.  I had my friend program one frequency into the call channel and the
other as my only single memory channel so there is no way I can get mixed
up.  It is a poor handy talky for repeater operations due to its low power.
Unless, of course, you live right under the repeater itself but I wanted it
just to play around as a remote base and for that purpose it works great.
The thing is almost as small as a pager so I'll probably end up getting the
external speaker mic but it is as cute as a bug's ear and I needed it like I
needed a hole in the head.

Phil.
k0nx