If that's where you live then thank your lucky stars, because many of us can't get by with low performing radios and have to bump up to something better. Receiver performance is much more than simple sensitivity and my point is even the cheapest receivers can do ok in an environment with with no RF challenges. I live in RF hell that eats cheap radios and spits them out. No reception on the Baofeng, fine reception on all others. This is with the same antennas on each handheld at the exact same location. Take them all outside with an antenna attached and the Yaesu VX-8R or any other good quality handheld will hear weak distant simplex conversations on 2m just fine, but they don't exist on the Baofeng. The Baofeng measures much better than my $400 Yaesu VX-8R or my Motorola Sabers or my $8,500 Thales handheld and so on. To make a similar comparison, my $25 Baofeng will run circles around most other hand held radios I own when testing sensitivity on a service monitor in that isolated environment with just one signal. The last two comments would relate only to sensitivity and in actual "performance" the R8600 will leave an AOR 9600MKII or the R8500 buried in a pile of dust. So much so that I could not resist buying a 2nd. If Icom would ever cave in and add this mode would be fantastic but I'm not holding my breath that they will ever do it with D-Star being their baby. The only real bummer is the fact the R8600 (as well as all other Icom radio's) is the fact it does not cover the popular DMR digital mode. The R8600s do a fantastic job for all my monitoring from NDB's up to the V\UHF ranges which were my initial interest. Since purchasing the first R8600, my use of the older models has dropped off considerably with the R9000 being the exception. It's used more for sitting on a frequency of interest seeing if it comes alive. I never did get the R9500 but do still use my R9000 near daily here. As you may be aware, the R9000 and its newer brother, the R9500 were both considered some of the best as well but they sure put a dent in your wallet. All good receivers in there day and all are still very useful to this day. As others have pointed out, the measured performance of this receiver is world class across the board.
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