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Reviews For: Nifty! Quick Reference Mini-Manuals for Yaesu, Kenwood & Icom

Category: Ham Shack Accessories

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Review Summary For : Nifty! Quick Reference Mini-Manuals for Yaesu, Kenwood & Icom
Reviews: 38MSRP: 16.65
Description:
High Quality, Laminated, 12 page booklets covering all aspects of Multi-band, all mode radios. Printed in color, these quick reference guides are packed with condensed and simplified step-by-step setup and operating instructions that are easy and clear to use.

Compact and rugged design lets you keep the guide with you when operating your rig so you can re-program your radio no matter where you are. Instruction sequences are augmented with hints and explanations not found in the manufacturer's user manuals.

Faster and easier to use than a normal user manual, Nifty Ham Accessories has produced a series of these handy guides for most current model Yaesu, Kenwood and Icom transceivers.
Product is in production
More Info: http://niftyaccessories.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
34384.2
K4GTE Rating: 2023-08-10
Great, Concise Manuals Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I use these for portable operations, Yaesu FT 891, Icom IC 7300, and Icom ID 5100 versions. Great for portable operations when the full size factory manuals would be impracticable.
VK6IS Rating: 2023-08-10
an handy reference guide Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Got one of these Nifty Quick Reference Mini-Manuals,
for my Yaesu FTdx101MP sdr radio.

it's an very concise quick reference guide,
for your new radio.

much handier than the big manufacturers manual.
VE7KI Rating: 2023-08-08
Great info, but... Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Purchased a Nifty Mini-Manual for my Yaesu FT-891.
To be honest, the content is very good. It is concise and well written. However, the format needs some tweaking.

The text is written in extremely small font. My congratulations to all those who can read 6-point font without readers or a magnifying glass.

IMHO Nifty should increase the font size and compensate by simply printing a few more pages.
G4VRR Rating: 2018-07-29
Great Idea Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I purchased a Nifty manual for the Icom IC-7200. It was impossible to locate one for that radio here in GB, but Fleetwood Digital in Canada supplied one at a very competitive price to my door in 5 days flat. It was just what I needed and fits the ticket even if a little expensive. (I guess the limited market dictates that?)

Fast forward and along comes an FT818 retirement pressie so off I went to my local emporium to pick up another Nifty. This one for the little Yaesu is equally as good as the Icom variant, but someone figured it was a neat idea to render the already small typeface in a low resolution pale grey font against the white background- presumably to make the paragraph headers stand out from the bulk of the text? It achieves that but at the cost of compromised readability. At anything other than bright ambient lighting, it is quite difficult to read.

I would have awarded four stars, but Nifty saw fit to fill the available premium space with one page of advertising for its own product line. Not great either at that price point.

It is what it is and I accept that, but in response, I have to mark the FT817 example down a couple of stars for these "issues", and I'll take no advice from septuagenarian hawk-eyed fellows with 20-20 vision thanks all the same. If I had not been so pleased with the Icom, I would have tried to read the Yaesu before parting with the folding green beer tokens!

Oh dear- this is nearly as long as the Nifty ;
N4UE Rating: 2018-06-01
Excellent tool Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Some guys would bitch about getting hung with a new rope. These are great, small operating aids.
Print too small? either get glasses or use the original manual.
The size is perfect for me and easy to read with my 72 year old eyes and dollar store reading glasses.
The actual material is fantastic and waterproof.

Why do I need one?
Having a 706g, a 7300 and a 7610 requires way more memory that I would rather devote to other things!!! ha ha
Lighten up, guys......
KG4RUL Rating: 2017-10-27
Gathering Dust Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have Nifty manuals for several radios. I find that while the concept is good, the execution is sketchy. Small type, coupled with cryptic information, tend to make me look for the actual manuals to get needed information.

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Earlier 5-star review posted by KG4RUL on 2008-06-05

Bought one for my Wife to use with her Yaesu VX-5R. Her HT is for hurricane emergencies when she has to stay at the hospital where she works. The time interval between her usages of her HT (drills, etc.) is so long that she forgets the nuances of this little rig.
KD0ZV Rating: 2017-10-26
Very nice. Not quite a 5 Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
These are very handy. This is my first and its for my Icom 9100. The quality is excellent and I would give it a five if it was about 3 pages longer with slightly more info. I am still going back to the factory manual more than I would like.

But its nice and will probably buy more of them for future radios.
W3FLH Rating: 2016-06-03
Nice for mobile/portable ops Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
The Nifty guides are a great idea for anyone working mobile or portable ops. If you are familiar with most functions of the rig, but want to be able to reference some of the little-used, obscure or buried functions, these guides are a great alternative to bringing your full manual along. They spell out all of the functions in some detail and are small, light, and durable enough to carry with you anywhere you go.

They aren't designed to replace the factory manual if you're just learning how to operate a specific rig, but they do exactly what they're supposed to for quick referencing once you've learned the basics.
K6SDW Rating: 2015-02-09
Better than manufacturer Time Owned: more than 12 months.
For my Elecraft K2 I bought the KDSP2 kit DSP filter.....while the directions for putting the kit together are excellent, the directions for setting up and using my new DSP filter are lousy and confusing!!

Come to the rescue the Nifty Mini-Manual for the K2, it includes the KDSP2 operation; And thank God it does!! Just setting the internal clock using the KDSP2 manual was very confusing to follow, but the Nifty manual was written in clean directions and my K2 clock was programmed and running in seconds!

The same goes for using the DSP mode, as with most Elecraft gear 1 button serves many purposes and again the Nifty manual was so much clearer then the K2 manual.

Great job NIfty!!

Elecraft, maybe you could get some assistance from N6FN on how to write a user manual....HI HI

Cheers All!

ed

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Earlier 4-star review posted by K6SDW on 2014-02-10

I bought the HF Bands Operating Guide and I use the reference guide to quickly know what operating modes are allowed for each band-frequency.

But, on my cards, 60meters is missing and that's the one band I can never remember!!

Cheers All!
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Earlier 4-star review posted by K6SDW on 2003-08-26

Just got in the mail the Nifty Quick Reference cards for HF Bands Operating Guide -- a great resource, especially for mobile operation cuz the cards are laminated and tough!

My only complaint, the print size is pretty small forcing us hams over 50 to use reading glasses to read the print!!

Definitely worth the price!

73....ed
KE4D Rating: 2014-04-03
just fine Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have had a number of these manuals. With today's menu driven rigs, I tend to forget how to make things work, especially some of the not so frequently used features. My current K3 has an adequate user manual, I have the 280 page KE7X manual but for quick reference, I use the Nifty Mini, 24 pages and pretty well organized. It doesn't cover everything but I don't have to wade through 280 pages to find the simple stuff that I'm usually looking for.