Member III
I thought I'd start a thread about this little radio as I get acquainted with it. I've read a lot of the reviews, both positive and negative online and I'm sure my opinion is worth the price of admission, but I thought I'd share it just the same.
I picked this radio up used from a friend who had hoped the copyright infringement had translated all the way over into being able to use the Yaesu programming software to set it up. When it didn't, he sat on it for a while and finally decided to let it go for a great price. I just sold a spare HF radio I had so I jumped on it when he put it up.
So far this evening, I've played around with it a little bit here in the shack (at the house on the bench for you non-hams reading this) and I'm getting a little more familiar with it. I've programmed in a few local repeaters and even did a quick in/out check-in with the local nightly net.
Programming isn't overly complicated from the faceplate. It's much easier than something like the Baofeng UV-5 series radios, but probably not as easy as something like my Kenwood TM-G707. The menu is laid out pretty well with nice, understandable abbreviations for most of the common functions you would need to use on a regular basis.
The functions you can access from the mic are also nice. It's simple like my TM-G707 but gives you the ability to switch sides of the radio (basically two radios in one box), change power, switch from frequency to memory, and directly input the a frequency for quick access. You can lock the mic and also turn the mic illumination on and off from the mic. There are two buttons on the top of the mic that allow you to scroll through the memory channels in that mode.
I also wanted to test the cross-band repeat function on it. I owned a TM-733 Kenwood for a while that had the cross-band and found that pretty useful for using my handheld around the house where my little HT doesn't always work so well without the larger antenna on it. Setting up my HT and the TH-9800, I found that it is pretty slow to start the actual cross-band transmission vs the TM-733. You have to be patient and wait for it to set itself up to transmit. This is by no means a deal breaker on the radio. Knowing that it takes a second to kick in, you simply do a 3-count before you begin speaking so everything is working properly. I don't think I would use this radio for a long net such as my local nightly 2m net here. It doesn't take much time to really heat up, even on low, and I'd be afraid of cooking the finals. I'm not sure what the duty cycle is on these little radios, but they are not 100%. I'll be using sparingly from now on because of that.
Once I get her programmed up, I'm going to mount it up in my Xterra and the real fun will begin. The plan is to eventually replace it with a TM-D710Ga Kenwood (can you tell I like Kenwood?) to also have the APRS functionality and then this radio will probably get the honored place of "garage radio" or possibly take a spot in my K2500.
So that's my initial take on this little radio. Considering it's a pretty full featured radio you can get for under $200, so far I'm pretty impressed with it. I did read a review about the radio having issues with purity on one side, to the point that the user was actually keying multiple repeaters in his area at the same time using it, I will be testing that with some friends in the coming weeks. I'll report back on what we find after we test it out a bit.
73 all!
Terry KJ4TOZ
I picked this radio up used from a friend who had hoped the copyright infringement had translated all the way over into being able to use the Yaesu programming software to set it up. When it didn't, he sat on it for a while and finally decided to let it go for a great price. I just sold a spare HF radio I had so I jumped on it when he put it up.
So far this evening, I've played around with it a little bit here in the shack (at the house on the bench for you non-hams reading this) and I'm getting a little more familiar with it. I've programmed in a few local repeaters and even did a quick in/out check-in with the local nightly net.
Programming isn't overly complicated from the faceplate. It's much easier than something like the Baofeng UV-5 series radios, but probably not as easy as something like my Kenwood TM-G707. The menu is laid out pretty well with nice, understandable abbreviations for most of the common functions you would need to use on a regular basis.
The functions you can access from the mic are also nice. It's simple like my TM-G707 but gives you the ability to switch sides of the radio (basically two radios in one box), change power, switch from frequency to memory, and directly input the a frequency for quick access. You can lock the mic and also turn the mic illumination on and off from the mic. There are two buttons on the top of the mic that allow you to scroll through the memory channels in that mode.
I also wanted to test the cross-band repeat function on it. I owned a TM-733 Kenwood for a while that had the cross-band and found that pretty useful for using my handheld around the house where my little HT doesn't always work so well without the larger antenna on it. Setting up my HT and the TH-9800, I found that it is pretty slow to start the actual cross-band transmission vs the TM-733. You have to be patient and wait for it to set itself up to transmit. This is by no means a deal breaker on the radio. Knowing that it takes a second to kick in, you simply do a 3-count before you begin speaking so everything is working properly. I don't think I would use this radio for a long net such as my local nightly 2m net here. It doesn't take much time to really heat up, even on low, and I'd be afraid of cooking the finals. I'm not sure what the duty cycle is on these little radios, but they are not 100%. I'll be using sparingly from now on because of that.
Once I get her programmed up, I'm going to mount it up in my Xterra and the real fun will begin. The plan is to eventually replace it with a TM-D710Ga Kenwood (can you tell I like Kenwood?) to also have the APRS functionality and then this radio will probably get the honored place of "garage radio" or possibly take a spot in my K2500.
So that's my initial take on this little radio. Considering it's a pretty full featured radio you can get for under $200, so far I'm pretty impressed with it. I did read a review about the radio having issues with purity on one side, to the point that the user was actually keying multiple repeaters in his area at the same time using it, I will be testing that with some friends in the coming weeks. I'll report back on what we find after we test it out a bit.
73 all!
Terry KJ4TOZ
