Hi All,
I'm glad to hear of the renewed interest in the Yaesu VR-500 
hand-held,/shirt-pocketed,/Belt-clipped, all band, all mode, "Daylight to 
DC, receiver!

Over several years, About ten years ago, I owned several, and as a blind 
operator successfully used and liked them very much!
For, *Although there is _No special "blind accessibility," a combination of, 
gaining familiarity with the unit and its features, practice with 
programming and listening, sharing "work arounds," and having realistic 
expectations,/not necessarily in that order, will show this little box to be 
quite a performer!
Better than the AOR 1000, Icom R10, and a couple of other similar Icom 
receivers whose nommenclature escapes me at the moment;
and better than the receivers in the Yaesu VX1, vx2, and Icom IC-t90 hand 
held Tranceivers, all of which Ive owned and used:
*Now then.
to answer the questions posed, not necessarily in order of their 
"posure."/---Is there such a word?
**(And remembering that it's been nearly ten years since I've had a VR-500 
in hand, so description of physical descriptions of physical placements may 
be more than a little skewed!
/And finally and possibly most importantly, in this age of extreme 
littigisness, if there have been any newances, upgrades, or other 
unforseen,/forheard, or otherwise sensed, changes, to hardware, software or 
anywhere else of, in, around or otherwise persuent to the VR-500, of which 
I've not been apprised, I neither bare, bear, wolf, bobcat, jackall, skunk, 
possum, prairie-dog, or mosquito, any responsibility to fix, correct, buy, 
swap, or otherwise make good, obtain, repair, and or any or otherwise do 
anything but offer these observations!/come to think of it, should I even do 
this, considering all the legal ease, and or legan unease which may become a 
part of these musings?  Oh well, I think I'll be brave, and do it anyway!!!)
1, charging the optional battery pack.
*The units I worked with, had a battery well, which is revealed when the 
plastic back cover which covers the lower half of the radio is slid off. 
*A, Take your vr500, place it on its front, with antenna facing away from 
you.  B, Slide the back cover toward you.
and you'll find the battery well,
with terminals at each end for two AA cells, with these, the spring denotes 
Negative, or flat bottom of cell, the less springed looking end, is 
Positive./These Ends Don't Dirrectly Figure Into The Placement Of The 
Rechargeable Pack, which has no terminals on its' ends.
somewhere in the bottom of the battery well, were two either "squarish," or 
"rectangularish,"/(if there are such words, and if there aren't we just 
invented them,) terminals.
These terminals, correspond to two cut-outs in the plastic battery pack, 
revealing metal "wells" on the sides of the cells, which are wired to either 
supply power to the vr500, if they're charged, or allowing charging of the 
pack, when external power is applied, via the ext power jack on the side of 
the radio.
It seems to me that the bat pack would only go in, one way, and you couldn't 
get the wrong polarity of the chargeable pack to the radio's terminals, 
because of their placement.
(The original rechargeable pack was a NICAD, nicol Cadmium, pack, and the 
charge voltage applied was that required for that type of pack, Which Would 
Likely Not, be useful for N I M H/Nicol Metal High Dried, cells.
Additionally, The External power _Is Only Applied To The Special In Well, 
and Not To The Well End's terminals, so there's no danger of fouling up non 
chargeable batterys when using ext power.
(I always found that either standard AA, Longlife AA, or in later 
applications rechargeable NIMH cells gave longer life than did the optional 
Yaesu pack, although it was a convenience./Your mileage may vary.
2, External antenna overload problems.
Somewhere on the VR-500's keyboard, is an "ATT,"/Attenuater button.  As I 
recall, it is a single function button, and it works pretty well.
How did I find performance?
I found the included duck antenna did surprisingly well across the freq 
spectrum, (Many if not most days, outdoors at my home in north east GA, USA, 
I could get Gander or New York weather stations in USB mode on at least one, 
and often several of their 3.485, 6.604, 10.051, 13.270, and 15.051 
frequencies.
I also tried several collapseable whips, and a piece of wire, say 23 or so 
feet long, soldered to the center of a BNC connecter, did pretty nicely for 
an easy, cheap, carry along HF bands antenna.
I also tried the VR-500 with my G5-RV antenna, on which, of course, the ATT 
button really helped.
3, and the narrow setting for AM broadcast and HF bands, which is somewhere 
in the menu, is a very good feature.
I once worked with a vr-500 in which the narrow option was correctly set, 
and the difference it made was amazing!!
But unfortunately, I never learned how to engage the narrow setting.
In short, this little radio, is not a Sony icf-7600, or even a little 
grundig G5,6, or otherwise.  It's nowhere near some of those receivers, but 
it _it is ___much better than the Icom R-10/which is one of the hungriest 
battery hogs I've ever worked with!!!

In even shorter, If I could only carry one receiver, with which to do all my 
all band, all mode,  radio listening, I'd pick the VR-500, hands down!!!!
I'd program mems with markers, grab some AA cells, and a wall wart that'd 
put out between six and no more than twelve volts DC max, and have at 
it!!!!!
(By the way, if you've got one of these jewells you no longer want or need, 
_____Please let me know!!


Finally, I found this in one of the Eham.net product reviews of the vr-500, 
and this info may shed some light on the narrowing question.  I offer this 
quote which you can try, ignore, whatever!..Sincerely, Danny Dyer, Wb4idu.
***Quoted material follows.
"Also, there are two hidden functions in the configuration controlling the 
"User Port" and "Narrow AM" functionality. Of the original 32 functions in 
the configuration, these are respectively 33 and 34. The "User Port" 
function is stubbed (permanently inactive due to lack of code in the 
firmware) as the VR-500 hardware only permits one port (a serial port always 
available through the earphone jack). The "Narrow AM" function is very 
useful in improving selectivity (adjacent signal rejection), QRM, and 
selects between wide (about 8kHz by my guess) and narrow (about 4 kHz by my 
aural guesswork). The VR-500 AF output in either mode is too narrow to 
support goodies like a Digital Radio Mondial decoder (which requires at 
least as 12 kHz AF bandwidth). Wide sounds like about 8-9 kHz and Narrow 
sounds like 4kHz by ear. The means to enable these extra functions is to 
press and hold [3] [5] [9] [0] keys while powering on the radio."