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Reviews For: Retevis RT87

Category: Transceivers: VHF/UHF+ Amateur Hand-held

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Review Summary For : Retevis RT87
Reviews: 1MSRP: 59.99
Description:
Dual band handheld radio. IP67 dust and waterproof resistant. VHF/UHF 2m/70cm. 128 memory channels. 1200mah battery. 5w/1w output.
Product is in production
More Info: http://https://www.retevis.com/ip67-dual-band-rt87-amateur-radio
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0014
KS6DAY Rating: 2019-01-13
Good radio/poor manual Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I currently own several Baofeng UV-5R's and BF-F8HP's but have not used them in many months since I upgraded to the Yaesu FT-60R. As much as I love the FT-60R I was looking around for another radio that was a little smaller, a little lighter, a little less expensive but was water and dust resistant, which sadly the FT-60R is not. I found this radio and it fit most of my criteria so I bought one. So far I am very impressed. The fit, finish and ergonomics are far superior to the Baofengs. Even though it has a direct conversion receiver, it is done well and doesn't go deaf in an RF rich environment like the Baofengs do. On transmit the signal reports are good and I can easily hit repeaters that my BF-F8HP's cannot open, even with upgraded antennas. In short it is far superior to any Baofeng I have and I would recommend it to anyone looking to upgrade from a UV-5R or UV-82.

However, there is one serious shortcoming everyone should know about. The manual is complete junk. It is THE WORST product instruction manual I have ever encountered. It's not just the bad chinese to english translation. The layout and structure is confusing and major programming tasks are not mentioned at all. Since my programming cable is still in transit I am working on manual programming and it took me hours to finally figure out how to program a repeater. In doing so I had to bounce back and forth between different sections of the manual to finally gather up all the steps needed. This resulted in me having to write my own instruction manual. They also use different terminology for many common things. For instance, CTCSS is very important for repeater programming. Don't look for it in the book. You won't find it. They use the term QT & DQT then make it even more confusing since they consider CTCSS to be "non-standard QT". Just a mess.

And if anyone can tell me how to manually delete a channel I would love to hear it as the steps they show in the manual only switch the radio from channel to VFO mode.

So, in summary. A very good weather resistant analog dual band HT which could achieve greatness if it only had a usable manual.