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The quick reply if you want to go no further:

Icom IC-M802 about $1,799.99 (150 watts - with DSC)
Kenwood TS-480SAT about $ 964.99 (100 watts - no DSC)
Kenwood TS-480HX about $1069.99 (200 watts - no DSC)

You essentially need two parts to make this work - a transceiver and an antenna tuner. Although antenna tuners can be "matched" with transceivers so you can purchase off the shelf interconnection cables an antenna tuner is, for the most part, an antenna tuner.

The third (optional) piece is a modem. In the airmail/sailmail/marine world there appears to be only one that has all the shore station support built around it, the SCS modem. In my case it was the PTC-IIex from Farallon for $888.

Now, before I leave antenna tuners and get into the transceiver choice let me point out a couple of things:

1. There are two kinds of antenna tuners: balanced feeds and unbalanced feeds. Some tuners do both, but that capability is not common. Most built in antenna tuners (more on that later) are designed to work with a unbalanced antenna feed (dipole, beam, yaggi, etc.) You need an antenna tuner for a long wire - your backstay. Please seem yorkrose and my comments below about various ways to feed your backstay. I have never done as yorkrose suggests not because I disagree but because I have never had the occasion - my SEA tuner on the boat is a "Marine" tuner with a stud for the backstay and a second stud for the ground. It is fed by a normal coax connection from the transceiver. The "screwdriver" antenna on my Avalance takes the direct coax from the TS-480HX.
2. Antenna tuners have a maximum rated power - 100 Watts is common for Ham Radio, 150 Watts is common for Marine (since the Marine radio rule is 150 Watts - Ham is 1000 but few people run that much power.) Since an antenna tuner is a bunch of capacitors and inductors and relays running too much power risks arcing the relays. But usually when you are tuning you are doing so at very low power (e.g. 5 watts) so this is less of a problem.
3. Peak power is very different than average power. If you are talking you are most likely not putting out all 150 Watts all the time. On the other hand if you are doing Morse code or digital modes (e.g. airmail) you will be keying so that peak power and average power will be much closer to each other. So you are "pushing the envelope" so to speak harder if you are running say 200 watts thru a 150 watt tuner doing airmail then you are if you are talking.
4. Certainly if I were to end up selecting the M802 I would purchase the matching AT-140 antenna tuner. If not you would have to make a decision as to the antenna tuner you wanted to purchase.

Preamble two: There are two types of transceivers - marine and Ham. Some transceivers are accepted by the FCC to do both. The difference is that a marine transceiver can only transmit on marine frequencies and a Ham transceiver can only transmit on Ham frequencies. They can both receive on all frequencies. Of course in this computer age they can really transmit on all the frequencies - they are just programmed to prevent transmission outside of the "approved" frequencies. A very quick Google will take you to web pages that explain how to "unlock" the radio so that it will transmit on all frequencies. Of course, you are most likely asking - is the radio actually designed to operate in this way? The answer is yes. For certain categories of people, for example military affiliate radio system (MARS) operators, the manufacturer will unlock the radio. Most people who do long distance cruising have radios on board that can operate either in the Ham or Marine bands. This is also, by the way, true of the US Coast Guard. I have more than once heard the USCG "key up" on 14.300 mhz (the 20 meter ham band) to take over communication to a vessel in distress. So, just having the Ham bands will not prevent the Coast Guard from being able to get directly in touch with you in the event of an emergency.

Preamble three: Now Ham operators talk to Hams and Marine radio people talk to other marine radio people. You will find that with Satphone technology almost no marine radio people talk to each other on the marine radio channels. In fact, many sailors have Ham licenses and talk as "maritime mobiles" or Mickey Mouses. You can listen to this kind of communication at http://www.mmsn.org That is the home page of the Maritime Mobile Service Network - a group of Hams that provide East Coast ham radio services to Atlantic and Carabean ham sailors. When they go off the air the Pacific Seafarers net picks up for the Pacific. This suggests that you are more likely to find people to talk to on the Ham bands. So you will need to get at least a general class Ham license. Calamity, Calamity! Don't I have to learn Morse code? The good news is no - there is no longer a Morse code requirement for a Ham license. You do have to pass a written exam (actually a couple) but the entire pool of questions and answers is online with multiple practice tests, etc. Devote 1 hour per day for a month and it will be done with flying colors.

Preamble four: Is DSC important? A major difference between the Icom M802A and the Kenwood radios is that the Icom supports Digital Selective Calling. I considered this absolutely unimportant. My VHF Marine radio has DSC, and anyone that I would expect to use DSC to call me is going to be within VHF radio range.

At this point we can look at the two radios side by side. Perhaps the easiest way is to consider that they are designed for two different audiences. A marine radio should be mostly easy to use, a few twists of the knobs and you are communicating. Hence the Icom is channelized - pick the right marine channel by twisting the knob. The Ham radio community is very different - the holy grail if you will is to have made radio contact with every possible nation (or island, or lighthouse, or museum, or whatever.) Ham radios are designed to pull the rare contact out of the dirt. They have lots and lots of features - lots and lots of settings, etc. They also have a bigger (although still small) market to distribute the fixed development costs. As a result the Ham radio is more likely to perform well in fringe conditions (if you know how to use it) than a marine radio. Both radios have computer connections - but I would suggest the Kenwood does more (e.g. you can remotely run the Kenwood over the internet from your home presuming you have the radio connected to a computer on the boat and the computer is connected to the internet. The Kenwood will run certain audio modes (PSK for example) without any modem at all. And it has built in pre-amps and attenuators for the antenna(s.)

All in all, I did not "get" what made the Icom worth an additional $800. If anything my sense was that it should be cheaper, not more expensive. BTW - there are several reviews of the Kenwood TS-480HX - you can find them with Google. Here is a couple to start:

http://cruisenews.net/cgi-bin/mmham/webbbs_config.pl/noframes/read/653

http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/3325

A couple of final observations:

1. There are Ford guys and Chevy guys (maybe still!) In the Ham market there is Icom, Kenwood, and Yaesu. They all make good products. I own Icoms and Kenwoods, my personal belief is that Kenwood delivers more bang for the buck. So know that I am kind of an Kenwood guy.

2. I have stayed at the low end - there are semi-commercial and commercial radios that cost a lot more. I did not feel I needed to spend more than I did.

3. I purchased the "HX" rather than the "SAT" because I did not need the internal antenna tuner. (The internal tuner is for a "balanced feed", it would not work on a backstay.) My radio lives on Reboot in the summer with an SEA antenna tuner and in my Avalanche in the winter with a "screwdriver" antenna. Neither configuration would have made use of the internal "SAT" antenna tuner so I spent a few bucks more and got double the power output. But in fact most of the time I keep it dialed back to 100 Watts. From Lake Michigan I get "armchair copy" reports from the West Coast, Arizona, the Caribbean, Texas, and Florida. I have worked Japan and Germany from both the car and the boat at 100 watts or less. Sometimes I run 10 watts for fun. In the middle of the lake the manmade background noise declines to almost nothing and all that water around the boat is the best counterpoise (i.e. ground plane) one could ask for. So the "SAT" would have been fine and saved me a few bucks.

4. Because I have been in Ham radio for a lot of years and like it as a hobby I purchased some of the options (e.g. the special filters, voice unit, and TCXO) None of these are really necessary.

5. I would look at the Icom 7000 (a few more bucks than the Kenwood) rather than the M802 if I had to own an Icom. It may actually be a better radio, but I have not owned or used one.

But I prattle on and on - just call me pedantic. Or, if there is more information that would be helpful post and I will try to answer.

Gene:

1. I was under the impression that the built in antenna tuner on an SAT could not feed a long wire. If that is incorrect I am curious how I would wire it? Center to long wire, shield to counterpoise?

2. You are correct, it is not type accepted. I have not found any occasion to use the Marine bands. Perhaps some races require it, I don't know. In an emergency I know I can use any mode and any band and any transmitter so it has not be a major concern.

Once I understand the answer to "1" above I will edit my post to make it correct.
Thanks in advance for the info.

Roger
Reboot #493
W2ZDB