| N0MUD |
Rating:      |
2009-03-01 | |
| Superb Radio |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I own three FT-8800r's and two FT-7800r's. I have one FT-8800 in my truck, one beside my recliner, and one in the shack. I have one FT-7800r in my camper in the box, it's a spare, and the second in my ham shack it also is a spare. The FT-8800r's are extremely easy to program, if I have a list of freqs to enter I can do it faster than using the computer program. Of course having three helps. The FT-7800r's are just as easy, I know this article is for the FT-8800r's but since I also have the 7800's I thought I would mention them too because they are just as easy to program as the FT-8800r's. I've had one problem with one of my FT-8800s and was on a trip and only needed the two meter side for the trip so while in San Diego I bought the FT-2800M and now keep it in the box for a spare for now. For the FT-8800r, the buttons are easy to use, the display is easy on the eyes, the sub menus are easy to get to. In my truck I use a dual band mobile/mag mount antenna. In the living room I use a Arrow dual band J-pole mounted on a PVC square frame and the one in the shack I use a Comet CP-9 outside on a pushup mast.
So if your thinking about getting one, go ahead, if you have a friend that has one try his out first, usually at the HRO's they have one on display for you to touchy feely and sometimes they have an antenna hooked up so you can use it. So go ahead try one out you'll want to buy one, HECKLES, buy two, or if you have a need, buy three, you won't go wrong, can't go wrong. If you'er ever in San Diego then stop in at the local HRO and speak with the Manager Tom, he will confirm that he knows me and if he fails to confirm then he's pulling your leg. hai hai.....so when you break down and buy one have fun, read the owners manual and dont be afraid to ask questions, you won't get your questions answered if you don't asked and remember the only dumb question out there is the one NOT asked. Have fun with your knew radio(s)....so
73's Mike NØmud
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Earlier 5-star review posted by N0MUD on 2007-04-01
I like the FT-8800r so much that I bought three. They are extremely easy to operate. The tuning instructions are so easy that yes I bought the program but I find that if I need to add a freq it is quicker for me to just do it manually. The one thing tho is your NOT supposed to be tuning your radio while driving. You can tend to make mistakes or worst while your eyes are off the road and on the radio you now tend to be a hazard on the roadway. For gosh sakes if you need to tune your radio then either do it before or after your done driving and if you can't then pull over and do it. No radio is built to be tuned while your driving. With owning three FT-8800r's and three FT-7800r's they all operate extremely well and almost tune the same with the exception of the FT-7800r's aren't dual receive as the FT-8800r's are. I hate Icom's so no comparison there and PLEASE PLEASE don't email me and ask me what I like about the FT-8800r/7800r's I own three of each nuf said. I tried responding to a fellow ham that kept asking me the same question over and over and I finally had to tell him to READ THE MANUAL and get help locally. I didn't mean to be mean to him but his questions were the same each time and we live in different states and I don't know him from Adam.
Again I have three of each and I enjoy all of them. Never a problem.
73s Mike N0mud
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Earlier 5-star review posted by N0MUD on 2005-03-17
I now own three, nuf said. I also have the program to make the ease of programming better, however, I find it is easier to program the radio by hand much easier and faster than taking it out of the truck and bringing it into the house and set it up and then program it then take it back out to the truck. I just leave it in the truck and program it there. I enjoy the ease of any freq I have and the ease of finding it on which ever side I programed the radio. On all 3 rigs they are all programmed exactly the same and I know what I have and where. The only problems that I've had were operator error and I fix that problem real easy I just watch what I am doing. The radio is very easy to operate, easy to program, I've never had anyone tell me they can't understand me or no one has ever said my radio sounds funny or nothing at all except great accolades on the radio. Yes it's expensive but you're getting alot of bang for your buck. If you have a friend that has one see if he will let you try it out before buying your own, you know kind of like kicking the tires before buying it. Anyways folks its a great rig and yes I've said it before and I will say it again. |
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| KF8HW |
Rating:     |
2009-02-23 | |
| Decent rig! |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I have two of these. They work well. I have to admit these rigs take some learning, and I would not recommend doing it on the fly (driving!). The thing I don't like is how small the buttons are, and they are not backlit. It isn't fun to access menus at night. Plus, if the road is the least bit bumpy, those buttons sometimes get pushed more than once. The on/off switch is on the right side volume control; if you accidentally push in the knob above it for the same length of time as you would to turn off the rig, it will goof up your frequency and that can be unnerving! It also suffers from intermod on certain frequencies. Aside from its quirks, it is a good radio. |
|
| KC9NVV |
Rating:      |
2009-01-20 | |
| Great Radio |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
| This is a great radio I just received my second one yesterday this is the best radio that I have used I have found that it is the easiest radio to program and I would recommend getting the software to program the radio it workes great eveyone should own one |
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| W3NRL |
Rating:      |
2009-01-12 | |
| Ok not bad |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I was looking for a small unit with dual rec'v
and a unit that i can depend on, next something to mount in my new Chevy Impala. After many reviews on many radios, I ordered the ft-8800r.
I was surprise of the size and all the bells and whistles, and a real dual bander ( 2 radios in one ). I had the radio programmed and installed in the mobile in one hour and forty five mins and very pleased. OK not bad little rig.
Oh! not bad little scanner as well!!!
It's a keeper!!! |
|
| K1ZW |
Rating:      |
2009-01-11 | |
| Smooth operating radio |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I got this radio 3 weeks ago and have been running it in the shack just to get use to the controls. I've been a ham for 36 years and this is by far the best dual band radio I've had. I described the operation smooth, the controls are logically laid out and simple to program. I'll follow this up once I get it in the car. 73 Larry
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|
| W4KPA |
Rating:      |
2008-09-25 | |
| Very happy with this radio |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I've had mine mounted in a 2006 Toyota Matrix for a little over a year, and I'm completely pleased with it. The receiver is very good, and I've had no trouble with interference. I've had the chance to hear the radio on the air many times and the audio is great -- very pleasant to listen to. I really like having all the memories. I program the radio with FTB-8800 rather than the software sold by Yaesu. I really don't have any issues with it. Yes, the buttons are small, but it's hard for a small radio to have big buttons and still fit in today's vehicles. It's a good buy. |
|
| KD0FBC |
Rating:      |
2008-09-25 | |
| Awesome! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Im new to ham radio, and my dad (ND0DX) gave me this rig. And iam loving it. I first wanted the ft7800r but this one with its dual recieve is amazing!
I really like that you can do pretty much anything from the mic. (except vol.)
I would recommend this to anyone. Very easy to use and operate. |
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| KJ4EOZ |
Rating:      |
2008-09-07 | |
| 100% GREAT |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I love this rig !! Yaesu did a great job with this radio . The info that comes with this rig shows on high power the rig will put out 50 watts on 2 meters but i have it hooked up to 2 power meters and and they show the same 57 - 60 watts and yes that is with the SWR's at 1.1
even my FT-2800 m show that it will put out 65 watts and im getting 70 or so out of it .
IF YOU TAKE THE TIME TO READ THE OPERATING MANUAL , THE RADIO IS VERY EASY TO USE !!
The cross band repeater Works very good , use it with my HT all the time . I have 2 FT-2800m
2 vx170 a FT-950 and now this great FT8800 R
next I will be picking up a FT897D ! So i have a back up HF rig and I can play with 2 meter ssb
Always happy with Yaesu !!!
Im a Yaesu guy !!!!
KJ4EOZ |
|
| G0UUU |
Rating:     |
2008-09-03 | |
| Excellent Radio |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
I've had my 8800 for about 6 months. It's used as a base station rig and overall I'm impressed.
The menu system is a little complicated at first but I soon got used to it, in any case once you've set up the local repeaters and frequencies in the memories you won't need to be using the menu settings much anyway.
Reports on the air have been good. People have especially complimented the audio.
Breakthrough from local paging transmissions used to be a problem when I had the Yaesu FT-8000 but there are no such problems with the 8800.
So far it's been a good reliable rig and I would recommend it to anyone wanting a VHF/UHF mobile rig.
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|
| SFR |
Rating:     |
2008-08-25 | |
| Overall a very nice rig |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
I've had my FT-8800R for about 5 months now.
When I unpacked it and hooked it up, the receive at first appeared to be completely free of all intermod! But then I noticed after switching to different antennas, the VHF side would sometimes pick up interference from the local TV channel 2 picture carrier at 55.25 MHz mixing with strong signals on the FM stereo broadcast band (odd that signals over an octave away from it's design frequency could affect it... it's sort of like an internal diode is rectifying the signals or something). This was worst on a Larson 2M 5/8ths wave, as well as on my Diamond discone, both of which have series-fed vertical elements that are nearly resonant as a 1/4 wave on 55.25MHz.
Fortunately a simple high-pass filter (or a trap tuned to the TV carrier signal) completely eliminates this, leaving a receiver with otherwise superb performance.
Intermod from "pager" transmitters and the like is virtually nonexistent on both bands (performance hardly degrades at all outside the HAM bands too, although in the range of 220-400MHz, it picks up a fair amount of spurious signals).
.
The twitchy volume controls:
For whatever reason, Yaesu did not use traditional 'audio-taper' potentiometers here, they are linear-taper, which causes almost all of the volume control's effective range to be concentrated into the first 1/3 turn of the knob (which is why they are so sensitive).
I was able to solve this by adding a 2.2K ohm 1/8 watt resistor from the center (wiper) terminal of each pot to ground, which effectively forces the control to act like an audio-taper pot (there is JUST enough room inside there for the resistor to fit if you position it right, but you have to have a VERY steady hand, and a teeny-weeny soldering iron, and good eyeballs or magnifying goggles so you can see what you're doing, the parts in there are quite microscopic).
I won't be held responsible if you damage your radio with "huge" blobs of solder! :-o
The delicate telephone-cord style microphone jack on the right-hand side is definitely a pain in the rear (the plug kept falling out on me too). I had to secure the mic cord with a clip screwed into the bottom of the radio's heatsink to take the strain off it (what the heck was wrong with the standard round 8-pin plugs from not all that long ago??)
As others have mentioned, the face panel buttons (along with that mic jack) are not sealed at all against dust.
I've found the menus easy to use once you become accustomed to them (shouldn't be difficult if you've owned other Yaesu products in the past). Programming the memory channels is a bit tedious though if all you want to do is change a setting on the currently selected channel (such as a PL tone setting). If you don't catch the radio advancing over to the next unused channel when you go to enter it, you wind up with duplicate channels where one still has the old setting and the other, the new one. Yaesu radios in the past didn't do this (my FT-530 and 50R, for example).
The radio's chassis is ruggedly built, although the control knobs look a little fragile. They might easily get bent or broken if you bumped into the radio while getting in/out of your car.
.
Things I like about the radio:
- Very good receiver sensitivity, with virtually no intermod to speak of (although may need the filter or trap mentioned above). I'm in a large urban area that can be tough on receivers, too
- Wide receive coverage from 108-520MHz, and 700-999.990MHz, no 30-54MHz though (strangely, they also left out 30-50 on the FT-8900R)
- Lots & lots of memory channels (over 500 for each band)
- Most readouts on the display are clear, with good backlighting (except the panel buttons are not lit)
- S-meter squelch function (works off signal strength, rather than just the amount of receiver 'quieting')
- Option of changing the right-hand button functions (key-2 mode)
- Search function works well (usually stops "on center" when it finds an active freq)
- DCS (with an 'invert' function)
- Built-on fan (although it's effectiveness may be limited by it's small size)
- Excellent transmit audio (with an alternate mic), very good receive audio, particularly on AM (aircraft reception)
- Built-in clone function (useful if you should happen to own two or more of these units)
- Compact size
Things I don't like:
* No separate BUSY/TX LEDs (it's hard to see which band is active using the tiny "Busy" indicators within the LCD display)
* No provision to transfer or "swap" the freqs between sides
* Display dimmer is still too bright on it's lowest setting, needs at least one, maybe two more dimming levels
* Power output on VHF is a bit low at the upper end of the band (about 46watts at 148MHz, vs. a solid 50 on 144MHz)
* Unit bleeps at you every time it stops while scanning/searching (forcing you to turn the key beep off), also scan resume delay is much too short, and non-settable.
* No "space" available on the alphanumeric displays, you have to use a hyphen instead
* Phone-plug microphone jack
* Supplied MH-48 microphone has a slight "tinny" sound, and is highly sensitive to air bursts across the front of the element (consonant sounds like "P", "F", "TH", etc. can easily become muffled by your breath).
* Strong signals from the TV & FM broadcast bands can cause intermod
It would also be nice if the S-meters functioned without the squelch having to be open (busy), would make it easier to see any static on the band at your location.
Overall I rate the radio 4 out of 5. It performs exceptionally well, but the receive can degrade with certain antennas that have resonances within the TV band where a strong signal is present. Even with that shortcoming, I've yet to own any other radios with a wideband receiver (besides my Icom IC-R7000) that reject 'pager' intermod as well as the 8800R does, so it'll likely be a keeper.
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