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Reviews For: Vertex FTH-2070

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

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Review Summary For : Vertex FTH-2070
Reviews: 4MSRP: 1075.00
Description:
Commercial Dual-band (VHF/UHF) Portable, suitable for amateur use.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.yaesu.com/LM/fth2070.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0043.3
N2DMC Rating: 2008-03-31
Good radio for the era Time Owned: more than 12 months.
When this radio came out, it was and as of this writing, still the only commercial grade dual band portable radio made. The audio was great, had an available mobile docking station that cost as much as the radio and had a four character digital display. This is a large radio but if you need a truly FCC type accepted radio for VHF and UHF commercial use, this is a good solution. Programming with anything faster then a 486 is risky and can ruin the software in the radio. I had one for work and it was nice being able to contact different agencies on the same radio.
N6VCW Rating: 2007-11-06
Good, general purpose HT Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
The sound quality, ease of use and the speed in which the programming is uploaded to the radio are impressive. It's a "brick" in every sense of the term, though. The only downside is that the battery and programming cables (including software) are expensive (~$185).
KV4BL Rating: 2005-08-21
Piece of $#@% Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Back in late 92 I made the mistake of buying on of these. It was the only commercial grade VHF/UHF hand-held transceiver I could find and it looked like it would meet my needs. At the time I worked for a state Public Safety agency for which I made regular out of town trips, transporting persons who could become violent. At this time, cell phones were still a rich man's luxury and our state was divided into regional "mutual aid" areas with most police agencies in a given area (usually 3 or 4 counties) being on VHF or UHF and sharing a common Mutual Aid frequency and PL code. The 2070 seemed the answer to my needs. My agency was on VHF hi band and the surrounding municipality and counties were on UHF. I ordered one of these from a land-mobile radio concern in GA, along with three rapid chargers, 5 batteries, leather case, programming hardware/software, and speaker/mic. When I first received the unit, there was a problem with the scan feature which would not allow the "priority" scan to work. The radio seemed to work well otherwise and my co-workers were envious as this radio has a much better transmit audio than the aging Motorola ht's in our inventory did. While wanting the scan feature to work, I hesitated to send it back as this radio initially performed head and shoulders above the Motorolas. After a couple of weeks or so, I noted that when transmitting on a UHF channel with hi power and the lapel mic attached, there would be a low level squeal in the speaker-mic. I contacted Yaesu-Vertex and was told to send it to CA to their repair facility and did so. It came back a couple of long weeks later with the scan fixed, but the squeal on UHF xmit returned soon afterward. Thus began a long interaction between myself and the Yaesu-Vertex repair facility in Cerritos, CA with the radio being shuttled back and forth on a regular basis for repair of the squeal and other things. Although I could ill afford it, I usually sent the radio back via UPS red lable as I hated being without this radios features any longer than necessary. At one point, they replaced the radio and the squeal on UHF xmit persisted. So did other various and sundry problems. I finally got my main contact at Y/V to admit that this radio's squealing was a design flaw and that Y/V had no cure for it. That's a hell of a comfort to someone who invested over $2K in this piece of junk and acessories! Yaesu/Vertex refused to refund my money (radio and acessories) and I wasn't even going to ask for a refund on my shipping costs which I imagine substantially added to UPS's bottom line for that time period. The batteries eventually wore out (with no more "use" than I was able to put the radio to as it literally stayed in the shop or in transit more than it did on my belt) and I dumped the radio and remaining acessories at a hamfest for 50 bucks just to get it out of the house as my blood pressure would rise whenever I looked at it, years later. To say that this experience left me with a bad taste regarding Yaesu-Vertex would be a huge understatement.
KC7MMI Rating: 2002-03-15
Great multi-purpose radio! Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Some versions (most I find) can be programmed for use inside the amateur bands. These radios have a big speaker with 500mW of high quality AF output. It also has a very handy invertible, four character, alphanumeric LCD display. The scanning operation is as what's to be expected in a commercial grade radio. Also, this radio is as solid as a brick. Even tho it is an older, bulkier portable, it's still a darned good one at that.