The HX460X is a fantastic piece of equipment that I have used and seen used by some friends. Standard Horizon's customer service is great and their warranty is good. It may sometimes be slow on turn around times, but the company reliably stands behind their product.
I have swam in salt water with this radio, shaken the water out of the speaker bezel, and then successfully entered into trans-communications with the salty, wet radio. It worked great every time I used it.
I would like to offer my criticisms of this radio, however.
After only one outing on salt water, the (titanium color model) finish on the radio's metal case was ruined. The company recognized a leaky (current leak) battery contact that was causing electrolysis to erode the case, run the battery down, and erode the battery contact. They fixed the problem.
(Which is more than I can say for Icom with my M1V which has a leaky battery contact that was fixed under warranty by replacing it with another of the same leaky contact battery.
But at least the plastic case of the icom does not set up a current flow with the battery contact as the Standard Horizon did.) Standard Horizon took care of the batteries on their radios (presumably by ensuring the necessary diodes were in place) and gave the battery contacts a gold finish to minimize electrolysis corrosion that could occur to the battery contacts.
The worst thing is the tendency for it to jump out of its holder, clip. This can send it to the bottom of the ocean very quickly; I've seen this happen.
The belt clip that comes with the radio has a pivot that allows the radio to be twisted to an upside-down position and then lifted out of the clip. The pivot is close enough to the gravity center of the radio that a bump of the antenna can send it spinning into a 180º position where it can be easily bumped out of the clip.
The second worst thing sent out a false alarm on channel 16 and also ruined the radio.
The radio has an attachment jack for a remote microphone. This jack has a rubber plug on it to keep it dry. The jack cover has a lip on it that makes it easy to grasp when a user wants to open up the jack for attachment of a remote microphone. This cover was bumped and easily lifted by accident and without our awareness.
Salt water spray was introduced to the contact points. One pair of contacts is the "push to talk" contacts. This caused the radio to broadcast on Channel 16, the channel it was set on. The radio continued to broadcast until it wore itself out. The user was unaware that the signal being broadcast was being noticed by many boaters, and the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard issued an advisory for everyone in the Santa Barbara Channel to be on the lookout for a vessel possibly in distress, due to an open mike transmission that had been noticed on the emergency channel.
As I skippered along in this area, I followed the Coast Guard's advice and kept a sharp look out for any vessel who may be in distress. Little did I know that it was my crew who had been the transmitter of this signal. When we got back to shore, the radio was all eaten up with corrosion from the salt water invasion. It was replaced for free, but I had to wait a long time.
There were a few other things that I do not like about the radio that are mostly personal preference issues. Overall, the Standard Horizon is a fantastic little workhorse. But I would advise anyone using one on a catamaran to make sure you thoroughly glue the little rubber covers shut to keep the water out of the jacks. I remember at least two jacks, one for battery charge and one for remote microphone.
GARY
![[Linked Image]](http://www.westmarine.com/images/full/stdhx460s_f.jpg)
