I"ve bought a total of 4 of these BF-F8HP's now (not all for me) and I will probably be buying more as gifts to family and friends. I just started getting into listening to HAM frequencies and learning basic/intermediate terms and functionalities, so I'm not an expert by any means, this review is for newbies/beginners. This is what I've picked up so far, it can be used as a regular walkie talkie using the MURS, FRS, and/or GMRS frequencies (make sure to research first in order to use legally, a license is needed for some of the FRS/GMRS frequencies and a limited power use), HAM radio frequencies used with repeaters that can cover long distances (license is needed for transmitting but you can listen to all the repeaters around you), police scanner (non-trucked systems, would need a digital trunked scanner for those specific cities), NOAA emergency weather, regular FM radio, and probably many others that I haven't learned yet.The user manual doesn't provide good instructions, especially when saving frequencies into the memory (I've had to learn the manual process because I don't have a computer that supports the programs, but it's also nice to learn this in case I need to input frequencies on the fly), but there are many youtube videos out there that walk you through it easy enough. The other websites that are very helpful for finding your State/County/City radio frequency information and HAM repeater info are radioreference.com & repeaterbook.com. I've already learned so much from this little radio and the research I've done to where I'm thinking to maybe studying to get my amateur radio license (HAM license) eventually so that I can start talking over the repeaters and see what range and clarity I can get, not to mention these things are perfect for SHTF scenarios!