| K7UQ |
Rating:    |
2018-08-23 | |
| good radio but the owner's manual is a joke |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I was intrigued by the small size and apparent good construction. I could not make sense at all of the owner's manual. The picture of the control head is different then my actual radio. I programmed it with chirp and that went pretty smooth. I currently have it mounted in my Mustang, just using Velco. I seem to get good reports from friends on our local repeaters. There are many functions the typical ham will never use, I would have given it a higher review, but the owner's manual really gripes me, |
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| K1LNC |
Rating:      |
2018-08-02 | |
| It would have cost a fortune |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| In the mid 70's I bought a Regency crystal controlled 2M rig. It cost, in today's dollars $1600.00. Yep. It used up to 20 crystals (10 channels) for receive and transmit which added significantly to the cost. It put out 10 watts. I just ordered a KT 8900D from Amazon and paid just under 80 bucks delivered. Haven't played with it yet but.....even if there was a rig available that would do what this little box will do back then it would have cost a fortune. I wish it was made in the USA....but it isn't. I'll update once I get into it. |
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| W5NM |
Rating:  |
2018-06-14 | |
| Typical Chinese Gear |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
| Audio Jack on back is bad. Processor scrambles display periodically. Receive Sensitivity is poor and I have noticed that I can rotate the tune encoder back and forth and the receiver degradation will go away and return it to its normal sensitivity. Turn on sound and beep sound is WAY too loud. Transmitter gets very hot on high power so I use it on low power which is 3/4 of high power level. Memory programming is glitchy and incredibly convoluted. The MIC is the best thing about the radio and its too big... What can I say... You get what you pay for. Seems everything I buy from China is garbage. Save your money and buy Japanese radios. They are much better. |
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| K2WJS |
Rating:   |
2018-06-13 | |
| Mine is not working either |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
| It worked great from August 2017 to May 2018. Then all of a sudden won’t transmit modulated voice. Will transmit DTMF tones, but no voice. Contacted the seller because it is in warranty and they asked for a picture of my inability to TRX voice modulated carrier. Anybody know how to take picture of 2 meter radio waves? Asked a few more questions, which I answered, and then all contact stopped. Shame, I really liked the radio because it was so small in the car. |
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| N1NUH |
Rating:   |
2018-03-02 | |
| It died |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I've had this rice box for 4 weeks and it has died. From my previous reviews I found the CHIRP configuration and was able to use CHIRP to program it, BUT you have to up load what's ever in the radio to CHIRP first or you get a communications error. It will recognize the radio and then you can upload what ever you want. I installed it in my truck. I went out on a 10 Deg F morning and the radio wouldn't turn on. Brought it inside, it warmed up and it worked. Audio: Audio was poor. I got a suggestion from another 8900D user who suggested to enlarge the microphone hole. It worked. It gets/got hot. After a 5 to 10 minute QSO the radio got very hot, but didn't stop working. I have another manufacturer's model with the same CKTry and this radio gets warm. I brought it into the shack and used it as a base. I left it on for 12 hrs and it stopped transmitting. No RF out. Rcvs OK. I got the extended warranty and will ship it back. I will ask for a replacement. The operational concept of the radio is OK. The way they bang them out with limited QC you are bound to get a bad one.
I am a fan of cheap 144/220/440 rice boxes. Too bad BAOFENG wouldn't take their UV5R series CKTry and add a 25W amp and make a mobile. I have had 2 UV5-RCs for a few years with no problems. I had connected one to a outside antenna and got the 12V battery eliminator and can click on machines 10 - 15 miles away, full quieting.
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Earlier 4-star review posted by N1NUH on 2018-01-26
It may have been an impulse buy from Amazon, but I bought it with a 144/440 mag mount stinger for the truck. The (generic?) programming software had to be downloaded from the vendor. Software loads OK under Win 7. I can't get it to upload the file on the xceiver. I tried CHIRP and found the build for the KT-8900 same thing. Clones the system uploads it and it doesn't show up on the screen. Manual programming is slow but easy. Instructions, as usual was a Google translate to English. Clicks in machines 15 to 20 miles away. Good audio and signal reports. Good audio on the Rcv. Does almost what I want it to do, except software programming. Plug in the cigarette lighter, draws about 5A DC and the rests nicely on the console. I bought another dual band from Amazon, to put in the shack; different brand, different box probably the same guts, same price. Also, I went for the Amazon 3 year extended warrantee for about $2.00. Probably will cost me as much to ship it back as it would for a new box. 73 de N1NUH |
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| BURGERLOVER65 |
Rating:  |
2018-02-08 | |
| Transceiver from hell |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I've been playing around with this radio the past three weeks and still can't make heads or tails out of it. Right now I can turn it on, use the volume, and change the frequency. I still haven't figured out how to program it. One thing I have discovered over three weeks is that some functions work but only when the squelch is turned on. Other functions only work when the squelch is turned off. It took me until this morning to figure that out. So basically the squelch control of the radio is a FUNCTION control like a menu that I thought was the function control. If this you idea of fun don't say no one ever warned you. |
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| VE6KK |
Rating:     |
2018-01-03 | |
| Nice radio |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I used and tested a KT-8900D for a few days for a friend. Among the "brick" mobiles it is a great choice. I own a Leixen VV898E and it is much more quirky. The Leixen is a bit smaller and it just fits in my Acura's overhead sunglasses compartment. I did not buy a KT8900 (not D) at the time because of the top buttons. The KT8900D menu access and operation is easy - MENU to access, MENU to choose and MENU to confirm. There are many settings due to the 4 channel display There is an exit key - PTT will not exit.
The display screen is very nice, visible, but herein lies the tragedy of the radio. **It would have been possible to provide a 2 channel display with 2 lines each** - one for frequency, the other for name. I, like so many hams set my units so that the top display is frequency and by tuning to the same channel on the bottom I see the name. Who memorizes a hundred or more channels? I did not test the unit with Chirp.
Testing the unit on a service monitor revealed good VHF/UHF SINAD sensitivity in the area of 0.18-.23 uV (better than spec), Tx Power was around 22 W VHF and 18W UHF. One surprise was that the low power setting was a practical ~ 10 W, not higher as spec'd. Audio o/p was strong though a bit muffled on NBFM, curiously better on FM BCB. One youtube shows a plastic deflector above the speaker - that helps. I thought I detected some bleed through from RF on one channel while listening to another but had no time to confirm. In all tests the frequency accuracy was within 600 Hz but we had a surprise when the owner came to pick it up. In a cool basement ~16 deg.C, the initial error was around 1800 Hz! It quickly drifted into spec after a short warm up with TX cycling. This needs to be confirmed and tested on other radios. For this reason I rate this as a 4. It is a great unit for the money. You still cannot beat the Yae$u mobiles though. Cheers and 73.
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|
| VE3TSK |
Rating:      |
2017-12-06 | |
| Excellent Value |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I purchased the radio from Amazon.ca for $112.96. It was an impulse buy on a Friday that was delivered on following Sunday. First I installed the software that came with it. The manual, as you probably heard elsewhere is typical Chinlish. I was able to learn enough to program one memory channel before I fired up the OEM software. It is NOT user friendly, but not impossible. I programmed 20 local repeaters and disconnedted.
I set it up in my car using a comet dualband magnet mount that I used with my HTs. With a SO239 to BNC adapter I hooked it up and tried it out. My first report said the audio was good and I have been receiving excellent reports whenever I key up.
The quad watch is a neat gimmick and it does work but you do have to be quick to note which channel is being received. Most of the time I leave it off.
It is small. So small that I keep it the console between the front seats and attach it to the satellite radio cup holder mount on my console.
What started as an impulse experimental buy has turned into quite a nice radio and is a pleasure to use. I wish there was head set made for it but I will have to craft one for myself. The only question is whether I craft for use from the front or the back speaker port. |
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| KM4NYI |
Rating:    |
2017-11-20 | |
| Great radio (for the money) |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
I ordered this radio from Amazon under the brand name Talkcoop. The manual and model number stickers all have the QYT logo, so it must be that the online seller bought enough of this radio to have a private name on the front. I picked this model particularly because the power level (25 watts) is low enough for them to sell it with a cigarette lighter plug to power the radio. I use it with a mag mount as a portable for when I travel with somebody who doesn’t have a rig installed in their car. So far, it has worked very well for this purpose.
The radio came complete with the programming cable and software, so for $75 I thought it was a pretty good deal. Right out of the box, the audio was really low on transmit, enough so that I had to pretty much yell directly into the mic to use it. THe mic is a knock-off of the Kenwood mic, and the element is in the back of the case underneath the PC board. I enlarged the hole in the board and mic case to try and get more sound through it, but no joy. An email to the Amazon seller resulted in a new mic being shipped to me, which solved the problem entirely.
The good: this is a tiny radio, but packs in alot of nice features. The display is phenomenal, and you can pick and choose from several bright, vibrant colors. The received audio quality is acceptable, and pretty loud considering the tiny size of the built-in speaker. I have received good reports on the transmit audio quality, and with the replacement mic had to reduce the factory mic gain setting a little. The quad-watch feature is nice, but you have to be careful to remember which of the 4 frequencies you are set to transmit on before keying up if running in the scan mode. Mine won’t quite hit the 25 watt transmit power its advertised for, but it’s close and remains steady even on long QSO’s. On high power, the fan kicks in quickly to keep things cool, but it still gets pretty warm after a while.
The bad: I never could get the factory programming software disc to load on my computer, and ended up using CHIRP. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it took a short amount of time to use CHIRP to load up 100 repeater pairs. There is also a glitch with the VFO knob where it doesn’t always move the frequency up and down correctly. I have found it works well if you turn it in a slow and deliberate manner, but if you turn it fast it might move the opposite direction or not at all. You can, however, use the up and down buttons on the mic without any issues.
I often hear folks refer to this as a quad-band radio, and it is not. It is “quad watch”. The quad-watch feature means the display on front shows 4 separate frequencies at the same time, but it does not actually receive all four frequencies simultaneously. In other words, if you have it set to listen to the frequency in slot A and somebody transmits on the frequency showing in slot C, you wont hear the second station. You can set it up to scan between all four frequencies, and this works well because of the fast scan speed. However, you have to be alert and make sure the arrow on the display is pointing to the frequency you want to use before transmitting.
In the end, this little radio does a lot and works well for being an under $100 transceiver, and you would be hard pressed to find another unit that offers more features for the price. The quality doesn’t approach the “big 3” ham radio manufacturers, but neither does the price. I bought it for a specific purpose, and so far it has served me well. |
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| W6CAW |
Rating:      |
2017-11-10 | |
| Working great for me |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
| So far it is working great. Don't know about any VFO problems. I programmed mine up using their software and only use the frequencies I have programmed. One heck of a radio for under $100.00 |
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