Entel were set up ten years ago as the UK distributor for Standard Communications, but soon branched out into designing and producing their own range of communications equipment. So far, Entel have concentrated mainly on land based radio: the marine range consists of a single hand held VHF - the HT640.

Smaller and slighly lighter than most, the HT640 was one of the first hand-held VHFs to benefit from lithium-ion battery technology that is old hat in mobile phones, but has been painfully slow to catch on for marine VHF. It means that the battery pack that screws onto the back of the HT640 and which weighs just 120g (a shade over 4 ounces) is enough to give it a nominal operating life of 16 hours. The basic controls are pretty obvious: there's a rubbery knob to switch it on and adjust the volume, with a collar around its base that sets the squelch. Up and down arrow keys are used
to select the channel, and the press-to-talk switch is in the usual place on the left hand side. So is the high-and-low power key, and another that operates the light and keypad lock. You don't have to be an expert to guess that the Mem key commits the current channel to the unit's memory, or that the Scan switches quickly between Ch 16 and whichever channels you've told it to memorise. What's rather less obvious is that holding down the WX key switches the radio between international, US and Canadian channel allocations, or that the A/B key can be used to zp quickly between any channel you have pre-set as channel A or B.

There wasn't much doubt that when it came to performance the Entel was the outright winner: it was crystal clear in both directions and on all channels.

For the HT920 Atex marine intrinsically safe radio please ring us for details.