| VK2ZJJ |
Rating:     |
2022-08-16 | |
| Great value for money |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I have 2 of these, one over 12 months old. Reading previous comments, I have had to say I have never had any problems with the 4 I have owned over the last 8 years. 2 have been payed forward and are now being used by Foundation hams. First, just use Chirp for programing. Second the quad watch is easy to get going. It is not a scanner, it just opens up on the first freq that becomes active. Third, I name my memories according to the location of my local repeaters etc. Regarding intermod, I imagine it could be a problem in cities but I am in a rural town so no probs. The speaker jack is wired with one of those stupid Apple inspired TRRS sockets, so blame Apple for that stupid standard. I built a breakout cable to sort that. I get nothing but good reports on TX audio, but I have a strong voice from years as an operator in the commercial world.
In summary, you get what you pay for, and I have had just as many problems with Name brands over the years, especially with intermod when living in cities.
If you are on a limited budget, you really can't go wrong, especially with what some want for 20yo non ctcss name brands etc
John VK2ZJJ Casino NSW Australia |
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| W4KVW |
Rating:  |
2022-08-10 | |
| Slow Start so far/FAILED |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Just got the radio yesterday & the programming cable was not working in my laptop & a friends laptop both with Windows 7 & his extra computer has Windows 8 & it could see the programming cable.I spent most of the day looking for a Prolific Driver but it was already in the cable but for some reason it just would not work? Finally got the frequency list loaded & it's working.The external speaker jack does NOT work so far but it seems as if I read something somewhere about a special jack that's needed so it works? The internal
speaker is not terrible since it's mounted under a desk right next to me in my Shack/Man Cave.I will write another review in a few months if it holds up & if not I have a Three year Extended Warranty.I did not expect much so I'll see if I aimed High or Low in a while. {:>)
Well the radio FAILED very quickly on the 440 band so I returned it for a refund.I will stick with ICOM as I did when I replaced this radio.You get what you pay for. |
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| K4ROC |
Rating:     |
2022-08-10 | |
| Very surprised |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I bought this specifically to put in my Jeep. I wanted something with the ability to monitor multiple frequencies including MURS and GMRS/FRS because I go hunting with non-hams. I wasn't buying this for the quality in the first place since my Jeep is old and has a soft top on it all year round. I mounted it to a Jeep-specific radio mount on the left side of the cabin and it fits perfectly. I didn't want to put my Icom or Yaesu rigs in there because my Jeep has a tendency to trap moisture thanks to the soft top. I figured if I got a year out of it, I would be golden. It has been a workhorse for me so far. It does get pretty hot when it is powered on and the little fan on the back is sort of a joke, but I don't typically have long QSO's on it anyway. The mic gain is set a little low right out of the box, and adjusting it is a little confusing. The menus are really deep, so I recommend using CHIRP to program it. The audio is loud enough to hear over the wind noise my Jeep produces. I feel that I have already gotten my money's worth on this little guy. If it goes out, then I'm not out a ton of money. I like the quad-watch feature though. I can monitor two local repeaters, a MURS frequency, and a WX frequency all at once. This is super helpful for what I use it for. I'd say roll the dice if you're just looking for a throw-it-in-the-car radio with quad-monitoring capabilities. It's not a Japanese radio by any means, but it gets the job done surprisingly well. |
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| K5MO |
Rating:    |
2021-05-12 | |
| Standard Chinesium |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I was looking for a throw-away price dualbander in case it was stolen from my truck. This fits the bill. It works, it still works after a year + (granted with low transmit duty cycle) and it's OK for the price.
A couple of things stand out ...poorly.
You're gonna lose the knobs, as they fall off when using them to make some settings. I still have mine, but they've fallen off multiple times if I'm not careful in using them in programming mode.
The Quad Watch function is hard to figure out. I'm still not sure what it does, nor is it mentioned in any sort of detail in the manual-ette. I *think* it displays the contents of the first 4 programmed memory locations but that's about it. No it doesn't appear to prioritize them in any way. It does not combine their audio. Who knows?
Chirp works fine with it.
There's high power and low power settings. Nowhere in the manual is it defined what these actually are.
Therein lies the basic fault of so much discount Chinese-ware. The manufacturers go to great lengths to create (and/or copy) a design, which by and large functions as a decent radio. Then they proceed to issue a nearly incomprehensible, incomplete, and or misleading manual. EVERY single time.
I know that good manuals cost money (my wife is a Technical Writer and I worked in hardware design for 40 yrs) but people don't even ask for "good" manuals, just accurate and somewhat complete .. even mediocre would be an improvement! The Chinese for decades have refused to recognize this and suffer more black eyes than they sometimes deserve as a result.
This radio is an example. It works...it's acceptable, but you're going to need to work a bit to understand how to make it so. YouTube is your friend. The manual is NOT your friend.
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| KD2TCA |
Rating:    |
2020-04-20 | |
| You get what you pay for |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
I would buy this thing again, but there are some things to consider...
I bought this radio to put in my truck, I wanted something small and affordable, QYT nailed it on those two things.
For under $100 I got an antenna, and a radio, it was a perfect solution for me at the time when I was only a tech class license.
The radio does a good job at hitting repeaters that may be hard to reach with a handheld, its lightweight and does not use a lot of power.
Here's my problems with the unit, the software is pure garbage. Repairing and maintaining computers is what pays my bills, and it was a struggle to set up. The software is buggy and poorly translated, but once you get it working it's okay. It did not like my windows 10 machine.
Lastly gripe on the radio is the microphone, its lightweight and feels cheap, the audio reports I get back are sometimes i'm quiet and muffled, and the PTT button is sensitive and does not have a good feel.
If you are looking for an affordable compact rig that doesn't cost much I say buy it, but don't expect it to be as friendly as a Yeasu or Icom. |
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| LNXAUTHOR |
Rating:     |
2019-12-25 | |
| small & inexpensive |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
update:
rig has been working FB after a couple years of being installed in the car - it has survived super-hot conditions from the brutal sun down here in the near Tropics, yet still works fine... i pulled it from service during this summer (2019) and installed it on the bench in the garage, then replaced it with another identical unit after cloning the frequency data (any FTDI USB cable w/tx@tip and rx@ring works)
the old one and the new one are both working great... these are a good deal, and much better than my old Yazoo 2800M which came with a bad mic connection and never did work quite right
original review:
Just finished setting up a new KT-8900D. There are many similar units on the market, and most run in the sub-US$90 range. Mine came with a programming cable - Prolific unfortunately (i refer FTDI) - but i simply rebooted OSX 10.10.5 to x86 PIXEL, plugged the cable in, ran chirp, downloaded an image from the radio to archive, then copy-and-pasted in my local repeaters into the image file and uploaded to the 8900D - took about 3 minutes or so as i wanted to check off on some of the additional settings.
Next, I attached my Diamond DL-30A dummy load to a Tenma SWR/Watt meter and read off the difference between high and low transmission power on 147MHz - it was roughly 24W and 11W respectively.
The manual is pretty bad, just covering the basics. I'd love to know the temps at which the fan kicks in (i tried one-minute key downs on high power on the workbench, but the unit never even got warm and the fan never came on; maybe after some ragchewing?)
Opening up the radio reveals some really, really tiny SMD work, along with obvious human soldering. The work in my unit seemed clean, and ferrite cores are on the fan and power leads.
Speaking of which, it didn't look easy to swap out the power leads from the radio main board to a thicker gauge. I'll probably add another fuse an do a powerpole termination. The existing power leads are kinda wimpy for me. I wouldn't worry if there was a more flexible power setting menu, but there isn't.
We'll see how some on-air tests go. But so far, it looks OK to me. |
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| AD7UF |
Rating:   |
2019-03-18 | |
| Wide-open receiver |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
I want to like this radio -- I want to be able to *use* this radio -- and hopefully it's a QC issue, and they're not all like this.
I've had lots of Chinese radios (mostly HTs, but also helped set up a few older KT-8900s for other people) and when I hear other people complaining about the poor receivers, intermod problems, etc., I just smile. Those city folks and cheap radio haters. Even when I visit the city it's not bad, but out in the sticks where I live, such things are certainly not a problem, and any radio that works on 2m is a good radio!
Then I met my new KT-8900D.... The first thing I noticed was that the scan (quad watch) was mostly useless because there were always noise spikes every few seconds on my favorite simplex channel that, even at full squelch, grabbed the receive. Then I realized that it happened with pretty much any VHF channel.
Then I realized that it seemed more sensitive than my other radios because I could discern weak transmissions, whereas it was pure white noise on the others. Then I started hearing snippets of the NOAA weather station 20 miles away. Funny thing is: it doesn't pick it up on one or two freqs -- it picks it up from about *any* 2m frequency -- 145-148 MHz picking up a 162.525 MHz station at 20 miles. Then I realized that it was actually picking up a LOT of different transmissions from different freqs, some voice, some digital -- it's just that the weather station is most consistently transmitting.
The receiver is so wide, it makes me think "spark gap era" -- like the tuning display is just for looks, and it really picks up anything in a 20 MHz blob of spectrum. It still works as a radio, but not the way I wanted to use it. If anyone has any helpful info on this problem (Google says I'm not the only one to experience it)...
The features are outstanding, esp. for the price. It's really a pretty cool little radio. But my particular unit couldn't possibly have passed with the advertised receiver specs. |
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| KG5TFJ |
Rating:    |
2019-03-09 | |
| Poor quality control |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
If it works out of the box (and that's a big "if", based on the experience of others and me), then it could be a handy mobile rig for the cost. But consider the risks first.
Mine did not work out of the box. I got if off eBay with the criteria of lowest cost, shipped from the US. So you see I'm very discerning to begin with ;) This one had a bad encoder (the knob on the right of the front panel) that did puzzling things when jiggled or looked at too hard. Mostly switching between broadcast FM receiving and whatever else it should have been doing.
I coulda/shoulda just returned it, but I happened to have a will-fit encoder from an Arduino sensor kit and heck, if you knew me you'd know I was going to take it apart anyway. The surgery went well and the new encoder solved the problem. It is possible that the original encoder was damaged in shipping, but I doubt it - the packaging was actually pretty good. I think that the manufacturer's quality control is just very poor. If this unit had undergone any half-rigorous testing, this problem would have been caught. I do not blame the cheap part because most of such parts are cheap.
I'm not so concerned about the hardiness of this radio for myself as, to be honest, I don't really talk much on the air. I have hardware hacking plans for it. But for most Hams who like to chew the fat and want a reliable rig on the road, I suggest giving this one a hard pass. Might be good for an off-road trip or some hazardous but non-critical duty where you don't want to put the high-dollar stuff at risk. For less than $100, it does pack a lot of features and the chassis itself is quite sturdy... everything that sticks out of it is suspect, though. |
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| KI4VLW |
Rating:    |
2018-09-04 | |
| OK radio |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I put my original review for this radio in the 8900R thread. Mine does fine on 2m/440 with decent reports up to around 20 miles here in the mountains, but the radio does not let me manually program any 220 band frequencies. When I try, and put in the last 0, the radio reverts back to the 2m band. But like I said, it does ok on 2m/440. |
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| W3GWM |
Rating:   |
2018-08-25 | |
| Good radio but needs some work. |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
This is the second radio I have had. I returned my first one because it had no audio or transmitted signal. Prompt refund and replacement radio sent.
I tested the second radio on Simplex and found it to work properly on simplex, so I plugged in my programming cable from RTS Systems, loaded my .cvs file and sent the information to the radio. Loading by hand is possible, but very time consuming. I tried using Chirp but it wouldn't cooperate, so I ordered software and a cable from RT Systems, Inc. They're software has simplified programming my other radios. As expected it uploaded the data flawlessly and I was ready to get rolling promptly.
Although the KT-8900D has for VFO's it can only scan on one at a tie. I like to load one memory bank with 2M frequencies, one with 70 cm, one bank with police and fire and one bank to scan with simplex frequencies. This isn't possible with the KT-8900D.
I also discovered that when I press PTT on repeater frequencies, the rig doesn't transmit until I release the key. The problem my be with the microphone, but I doubt it since it worked in Simplex.
If anyone has any ideas, I'd like to hear them. There may be some swlwetting that needs to be changed.
Please don't tell me to check the manual for instructions. The best use for the manual would be as kindling. There are the expected lapses due to translation, but this manual gives lots of information on worthless features and none on needed features.
I don't know if there is anyway to start scanning using the control head, but the only way I found was on the microphone.
This is a nice radio as far as well, but I needed to do more experimenting to make it work. Maybe it is broken. the size and it may work
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