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Reviews For: Yaesu FT-8800R

Category: Transceivers: VHF/UHF+ Amateur Base/Mobile (non hand-held)

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Review Summary For : Yaesu FT-8800R
Reviews: 173MSRP: 399.95
Description:
DUAL BAND RADIO
Product is in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
001734.4
KK8ZZ Rating: 2008-01-23
harder to use Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
The overly-easy to move knobs make this radio jittery to use... never know just where those settings are... Cheer.... Bob KK8ZZ
A61I Rating: 2008-01-03
BEST MOBILE RADIO Time Owned: more than 12 months.
1st when I bout the FT8800R I was using it as base station on the 2M and hear the Air Band and its really nice and easy use radio(for people who use Yaesu ) its have almost belt in fan never come hot.
Easley give you 50W am using it with diamond 2 band vertical antenna.
Its have the narrow and wide output from the setting of the radio.
Thin I used it on my car with AZ504FX diamond antenna which can give you 2band
Now am using it on my base agine and im happy with this radio
(I have 2 of my friend the are using it on the car for safari its have duty radio)
100% command for the VHF& UHF CAR OR BASE USE
N9OVE Rating: 2007-12-19
Nice Rig Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I replace my Alinco DR-600T in the shack with my first FT-8800. It was like a whole new world. Programming software is a must for the over 1000 memories. The Hypermemory function allows me to use it to scan Public Safety/Ham, VHF/UHF, VHF/VHF, UHF/UHF, Local Repeaters, or all repeaters with ease. I liked this radio so much I replaced an Alinco DR-150 and DR-590 in the mobile, with a second FT-8800. It scans fast like the DR-150, but has the twin bands like the DR-590. Saved space in the truck also! Great Work Yaesu!
W5EJ Rating: 2007-12-14
OK but has issues Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Good radio but I would not buy another.

The good:
Loud audio enough to drive any speaker
Good programming software available (3rd party)
Small unit with good remote head
Quick scanner

The bad:
I rated this radio a two because any dual tuner radio designed to do crossband repeat should do it well and this radio does not. Yaesu has encoded a delay in the radio after transmit completion which is highly annoying nad makes the radio difficult to use in public service events or any situation with busy traffic where quick back and forth transmissions are needed. This has been mentioned by several people on the yahoo users group and there is no fix.

Volume controls way too loose, blown my ear drums out a few times, controls needs to be tightened and Yaesu should have addressed this by now and has not (easy fix come on Yaesu!).

Bad intermod, compared to my FT-857 this unit is very susceptable to intermod. For the money they could have engineered a tigher front end and not hurt the wideband recieve capability.

Channel controls are on top instead of on the bottom which I find make tuning the right reciever hard as your hand will obscure the display.

All in all its not a bad radio just not well thought out with respect to control placement, ergonomics and crossband functionality. There are better radios out there now for the money from Kenwood and Icom that don't have these issues.
KE0XS Rating: 2007-12-14
Nice Dual Band Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Last dual band radio's I owned were an Icom 2710 and 2720. Both suffered from intermod while driving through town. The FT-8800r is a welcomed relief. I also use it to drive a TE Systems 1452G at home. The service menu was very helpful is reducing drive output on low down to 1.5 watts, Mid2=3 watts, Mid1=20watts and High=50 watts. This change elimates the worry of over driving my TE. The diplay is excellent. No problems programing manually.
VK2MMM Rating: 2007-12-13
A little low on power out of the box, but easily fixed. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Got this from a local ham shop here in sydney. Took it back to my mates place (an advanced amateur) and we tested all the functions of the radio. The radio came out of the box doing 44w on 2m and 30 watts on 70cm. A quick trip to the service menu and we fixed this up. Now doing 52w on 2m, and 42w on 70 cm. Reciever is excellent on sensetivity, and picks up signals that my previous commercial could not hear (that was as deaf as a post). Selectivity is pretty good, doesnt seem to hear two stations side by side unless one of the stations is overdeviating. The extra of automatically switching to AM mode (RX only) for the aircraft band sucked me in, as I am an aviation nut. I have plenty to listen to while the ACMA gets their act together and issues my call.

Display is nice and bright, and easy on my crook eyes. I was afraid of the menus, and learnt them within a few hours. I can now program a frequency into this radio in under a second, taking a few seconds longer if I want to add a alpha tag (usually around 30 seconds). The crossband repeat is neat, my buddy was talking on his hh from the backyard (300mw hh) to the 8800R chatting on the local 2m. X-Band is a very useful feature. It covers everything I'd want to listen to or talk to, so I have no need to open it up and freeband it. (besides, thats naughty!)

Those using it mobile will easily find a space for it, its tiny, unlike some 50W class dualbanders - this would slide into where an ash tray used to be, or sit happily on the dash without being too prominant.

Having 2 recievers going at once is very handy. You can be scanning the air band or the local emergency services, and yakking on the local/repeater at the same time. You can set the radio to reduce the volume of the non active band (the one you arent going to key up) whenever a signal is recieved on the active frequency, or bot when a signal is recieved, and when you TX, so for example you dont retransmit "qantas flight 07 turn right heading..." great feature. It practically halves the volume of the inactive band.

Draws 8~9 amps at full stick, so a 15 amp power supply like I built will happily drive it. You could use it as a luggable VHF/UHF station if you drop to medium 2 power and use a 7Ah gel cell, you'd get a few hours of use out of it.

All in all, a well presented and easy to use radio. Nice layout.

Only gripe is the buttons arent backlit and a bit tiny on the main unit. But once you memorise them, or put shortcuts on the mike, you're all set. You can drive the entire radio except for a few functions, from the microphone, perfect for mobile hams.
KE7ADL Rating: 2007-12-07
Exellent radio Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Right out of the box I had a mic. connection problem. With a little cleaning of the contacts, the radio has worked flawlessly.
People complain about how hard it is to program manually.... Some recommend the use of the p.c. programing tools from Yaesu. After a couple of hours of reading the owners manual and playing around with the radio I learned most all of the functions and found it easy to program manually! I have a Kenwood TH-F6A HT and they are NOT easy to master! (it took me a month).
Exellent radio I highly recommend one to everyone.
K0CMH Rating: 2007-11-28
I like it Time Owned: N.A.
I've had mine over a year now and still like it. Great dual band with cross banding function.

I got mine mainly for emcomm use and it fills that bill great.

But it does have the "yaesu multi-layer menu" thing going. The control buttons are very small, and it is real easy to push the wrong one while hitting bumps mobile, and turn on/off some function one is not familiar with.

But it is about the most radio for the money. Strong TX audio. Lots of features accessable from the mic. Decent RX audio. Ability to have two speakers going at once. dual watch, WX, lighted mic is great at night, etc.

A lot in a little package for a decent price.

SM5SRR Rating: 2007-11-13
Could be better... Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Got this one after having owned the FT-8000R.

Pros: A lot of features are included with this rig like being able to enter the frequency directly from the microphone keypad which incidently also doubles as a DTMF keypad. Lot of power, good audio.

Cons: Sensitive volume controls, no backlit buttons, too many menu options (not self explanatory ones either) which makes it hard to master the rig without the separate computer software. Glitches with the crossband repeater mode (strong white noise).

The radio itself is reliable and works great but from an engineering standpoint, somebody didn't think this one through.
K3CLT Rating: 2007-10-23
Great Radio Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have had this radio for a couple of years now and it is a workhorse. I turn it on in the morning when I go to work at 6:00AM and turn it off when I get back to the hotel around 7:00PM. I use it all day long with my work and hobby. I use the crossband repeat when I meet my fellow hams for breakfast on the weekends.
It is two complete radios in one and the way you can set it up is endless. I monitor the State Police with one side of the radio while I travel and work repeaters with the other.
Since I travel far from home I use a very high gain when traveling and use a short one when around the job site. This past weekend I worked one of the Pittsburgh repeaters when I was about 75 miles from the repeater.
I use the separation kit and have the main unit under the rear seat of the truck.
I don't doubt that there are some other radios out there that are just as good. I just feel that this is as good as you could ever want.
There are no down sides to this radio.