Here's why I have a quad-band FM mobile rig. A lot of this may not apply to anyone, but to a ham who is interested in any of these.... well, here ya' go -
- My quad-band radio is mobile, and I travel with it into areas where there are 6 and 10M FM repeaters in addition to 2M & 70cm. If you never travel with a mobile rig, ignore this.
- I have several 6M and 10M FM repeaters local to me, in addition to the usual 2M & 70cm
- I enjoy working FM as a Rover during the 3 yearly ARRL VHF Contests. If you never have or never want to try working as a Rover on VHF FM, then ignore this.
- My quad-band mobile transceiver has two full-time receivers and a duplexer, so it works as a crossband repeater from any band to any other (10M, 6M, 2M, 70cm)
- I put 10M and 6M FM repeater freqs in my channels that I normally scan, and know immediately when there is an opening on 10 or 6 (if I'm in the car... different method used when at home).
My quad bander is my, "Yeah, I can do that mobile" rig. Now if I was really serious I'd mount an Icom-7100 in the car and add SSB and HF. But that's a major jump in investment from the $220 quad-band FM radio to the $900 IC-7100 + antenna(s) and tuner.