| N3JTN |
Rating:  |
2005-06-08 | |
| Great Radio |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| Installed radio in my Ford Ranger programed radio up and did not open up manual, this is good i like FT-7800 rec is good and tx also give it 5+........... :0) |
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| KB5UDF |
Rating: |
2005-06-06 | |
| Exceptionally fully featured dual bander/scanner. |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Physical Construction: Overall excellent. The radio chasis seems made of thick, solid die cast aluminum.
Heat Dissipation: Seems excellent, though I don't tx on high alot. I like the fact that the fan comes on as soon as I tx, regardless of power level. The heat sink is well designed, and seems to have a surprisingly large amount of airflow from the small fan.
Transmit quality: Very good signal reports.
Receive quality: fidelity is good to very good, though it has a little less "crispness" and bass compared to my ft-5100. These differences are not significant for my comprehension of speech.
Audio output power (subjective): Excellent drives external speakers to loud levels which easily overcome road noise. This radio is about as loud as many commerical rigs I've used, and with similarly no notable distortion/hiss.
Receive sensitivity: Excellent in real world usage. I have used it both with a high gain vertical base antenna, and mobile with a commericial broad/dual band quarterwave by comtelco. In my local metro area, with the mobile antenna, I am usually able to at least partially hear most repeater users directly on the input frequency! Quite a performance considering the small unity gain antenna. The radio seems to do a great job from the ham bands to the forest rangers I monitor on 171 mhz. Performance was also excellent in the 800mhz public safety band, despite my antenna setup (mentioned above). VHF airband receive was also excellent, and UHF airband seemed adequate, but I don't have the right antennas to test UHF/mil/air well.
Interference rejection: Excellent in the ham bands, very good elsewhere. In the ham bands my ft7800 does as well as my motorola maxtrac and mt2000 in rejecting interference. Basically there is none, if I hear it, its on frequency.
Outside of the ham bands, I noted images of vhf high frequencies in the GMRS/FRS band, but these were usually less than one S-unit, and easily squelched out. Somewhere in the 460mhz region, I recall hearing a NOAA broadcast from 162.55mhz.
But overall, both in and out of the hambands interference rejection is excellent, I deliberately drove to the most troublesome, RF intense areas in several cities, and only heard one brief chirp (which barely broke the squelch) on the ham bands, while I was on a VERY tall bridge. Even then I'm not sure the chirp wasn't on the ham frequency (it happens believe me).
Feature Set: Excellent, this radio has about as many features as any motorola or ham radio I've used (with the exception of signalling protocols like mdc1200, ge-star etc.). I can program odd splits, like a commercial rig, or even cross band ones. I can program the marine channels to be able to monitor both sides for duplex channels.
Display: Excellent. Large bold lettering, easily readable at a glance. Bright LED's, but too bright for night driving unless dimmed, contrary to what the manual says.
User Interface: Fair. As someone who evaluates usability of software systems for a living, this is the weakest point of this product. It has the features of a 21'st century radio, but the user interface of a 20th, with regard to changing settings and programming the rig. Programming the rig or changing lots of settings (or almost anything) is best done by PC interface. But if you must, you can change things manually, just get ready for diligent manual reading. Basically, the radio has a menu system (stretches the use of the term) with only one set of options, so you scroll through 48 or so system options to find the one you are looking for. The options are not somehow subcategorized, like on other rigs or nokia cell phones.
For everyday usage, The user interface is actually quite good to very good, just not so for programming.
Firmware bugs: The more I used the radio the less I believe that the firmware is buggy. Rather, problems reading the manual or undesired features cause confusion. For example, a previous reviewer noted problems trying to select no-bank and return to memory mode after bank scanning. The procedure in the manual does work, it's just confusing because it SOUNDS like it gives you and error 'bomp' noise when you do it. Not technically a bug, imho, just poor implementation. Also, the radio tends to remember whatever you were doing, and preserve that setting, esp. with regard to hyper memories. So if hypermemory one has you scanning bank one, and you stop scanning, and goto the vfo, then goto hypermemory 2, when you return to hypermemory 1, it will be in vfo mode. Not really a bug, just, imho, a bad feature/implementation, buteasily fixable (just hit go back to memory mode and hit scan).
Scanner use: This is a great conventional scanner, 1000 memories, 50 search ranges, and 20 banks! Channels can belong to multiple banks if desired. This would be an awesome convential scanner if it had a faster scan speed (I measrued it at about 12 channels/sec). So if you want to catch rare signals, don't load up the bank with too many channels.
Tone Squelch/DCS: Works fairly well, but if you have the squelch low, the scan speed will slow while the radio checks for the correct tone. I noticed on at least one police repeater, if I am in an area with high background noise (like right near my pc), the DCS decoder can be fooled, and stay open too long after the transmission ends. But I've had no problems with CTCSS tones, and problems with the DCS decoder while mobiling around.
Microphone: Basic and workswell. I like the direct frequency entry. On one of my two, the ptt button was sticking, but I found this was because of an overly tight screw on the little round mic hook for hanging. 1/4 turn looser and no more sticking.
My one scarey moment: After programming the rig 10 times or so with yeasu software and cable, my rig went brain dead. Powered up, but no display, no lights, and no keypad input. It just locked up. Performing the mars/cap mod reset the cpu, and the radio was worked fine ever since. I guess the lesson hear is, like commercial radios, be very careful uploading to the rig, check your cable etc, every time, I think I had a loose connection to my comm port.
This seems a rare problem however, and tech support was not familiar with it occuring.
Overall: I like the radio so much, after buying one for the car, I got one for the home QTH. I am amazed at how much I purchased for how little money. |
|
| KR3DX |
Rating: |
2005-05-30 | |
| Firmware Bugs? |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
The following are my personal observations and opinions: I recently bought a second FT-7800, it seems like it's one of the better 2M/70cm rigs. The "click stops" in the rotation of the main tuning knob seem more pronounced than in my older 7800, so it's got a more positive feel to it. The only negatives that I have encountered with this rig are a few firmware bugs which are identical in both of my rigs, indicating that Yaesu-Vertex-Standard hasn't corrected this problem in the year or so that this model has been available. I think that it's inexcusable that a rig is offered for sale with these defects in the first place, I guess the Japanese can't locate these bugs in the firmware and then they can't correct them once the defects are pointed out to them. Anyway, on page 37 of the manual, under the "Memory Bank Recall" heading, once you "select" a memory bank, the rig should then tune only those memories in the selected bank, but this does not occur unless you press and hold the "scan/select" key to initiate the "bank scan" feature, then stop the scan. Trying to select "NOBANK" ,as per the manual, doesn't work. To exit Memory Bank operation, you must select a new "Hyper-Memory" to go back to normal memory channel operation. Incidentally, I have turned off the "automatic" function for the Hyper-Memories. The manual is VERY poorly written regarding the Hyper-Memories and the Memory Bank Scan functions, as well as being fragmented, ie, the Memory Bank feature is on page 37 as well as page 44. I probably shouldn't complain though, the "Jinglish" (Japanese-English) in this manual is about as good as it gets. The other bug is on page 44, "Memory Bank Scan". You select as many memory banks as you want to scan, then push and hold "scan/sel" to start scanning. OK, that works, you will notice that in the upper left hand corner the display indicates "b 19" or whatever bank is being scanned at that moment. So far, so good. If you pause the scan by pushing the PTT, that bank display reverts back to memory channel number! At this point, the manual doesn't even tell you how to exit the "Memory Bank Scan" function. I have tried selecting "NOBANK", it's still impossible to select this setting, the rig just beeps twice and doesn't do anything useful. Remove the "decimal point" from all of the selected banks, still no good, you are stuck in the "memory bank" mode! The only way that I have found to exit this mode is, once again, select a different "Hyper-Memory" number! The work-around is OK, the real drawback is when you are scanning more than one bank and you pause the scan, the 7800 will then scan ONLY the bank that you paused upon, you have to push and hold the "scan/sel" key on the faceplate of the rig to resume scanning all of the selected banks. TEDIOUS. These defects should have been discovered BEFORE a rig is offered for sale, or maybe even corrected AFTER A YEAR OF BEING ON THE MARKET. The FT-7800 is a good rig physically, the intermod performance is great, the finals don't seem to burn out periodically, nor have any other major hardware issues surfaced (to my knowledge). It's a shame that a few simple firmware bugs are allowed to spoil an otherwise great rig. User Manuals that are written in a grammatically correct, concise manner, in a customary USA English language dialect, would also be a big plus for most of us here in the States. I'd suggest that anyone considering programming software for their 7800 read the reviews for both RT Systems and FTB-7800 by Bob Freeth, G4HFQ. I personally find Bob's work to be almost flawless, it's a shame that Yaesu-Vertex-Standard didn't consult him for help in writing their firmware either.
73,
Denny
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Earlier 5-star review posted by KR3DX on 2004-10-31
I've had my FT7800 for 7 months now, I use it almost every day, no problems so far. I've made my own extension cable for the remote head as well as one to extend the mic cord. Pulling on that mic cord would eventually pull the coiled wire from the RJ connector. As others have noted, the main tuning knob doesn't have deep enough detents, but that is a VERY minor issue. The rig doesn't get too hot during long, hi-power transmissions. The receiver is VERY sensitive, even on AM aircraft bands (both civilian 108 - 136, and military 225 - 400MHz), 500, 800, and 900MHz bands. VERY little intermod, I've used the rig in metro Pittsburgh and Chicago with almost no problems. This rig has the BEST intermod performance of ANY ham transceiver that I have every heard, It's comparable to commercial rigs, and that is amazing. If you are considering getting programming software, FTB7800 by Bob Freeth, G4HFQ, is FAR, FAR superior to the ADMS stuff, in my opinion.
73,
Denny
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Earlier 5-star review posted by KR3DX on 2004-03-15
I've been looking for a dual band mobile for several months, when I saw that the 7800 had a memory system similar to the VX-2R, I decided to give it a try. I was a little worried buying a Yaesu, the problems with the FT-90 and the 7100M came to mind. But the 8800 and 8900 seemed to be OK, so I decided to take a chance. I've had the 7800 for 2 weeks now and I've left it on for 24 hours on several occasions, I've run it in the shack and in the mobile. Transmitting on full output it does get warm after several 2 minute transmissions, but not thermonuclear hot like the FT-90. 20 watt transmissions result in a moderately warm heat sink. I think this rig will last quite a while with normal use. The receiver seems very sensitive (I just read the review in the April QST which seems to confirm this) and the intermod performance seems quite good, on a par with my Motorola and GE mobile rigs (listening on the same frequency, using the same antenna on the same car). All of the features and functions work well, the receive audio is good (might require an external speaker for really noisy mobile environments) and I've got good comments on the transmit audio quality. With 1000 memories, the programming can be quite tedious, so I've ordered the software and cable from RT Systems so I can use my computer to program the rig. With 20 banks to assign the 1000 memories to, this rig will make a great VHF high band - UHF scanner. If I encounter any problems with my 7800, I will post them here. Until then, this rig gets a good recommendation.
73,
Denny |
|
| K9DY |
Rating: |
2005-05-27 | |
| Good Rig |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I have had my 7800 for about 2 months, and have it mounted with remote in my SUV. I liked it so well that I bought another at Dayton for use in the shack. My only complaint is the complexity of programing it. I am going to purchase one of the programing software packages to make it more bearable. The rig has MANY more features than I will ever need, but nothing is simple anymore.
For those wanting to mount the remote head, buy the cables from W1JIM, at e-bay for around twelve bucks plus shipping. The cables are top notch and work fine. It is rediculous what Yaesu wants for the same thing. You can mount the control head just about anyplace with Velcro, so you don't need the bracket either. I did have to anchor the mic cord with a paper clip to a vent grille to keep from pulling on the head, but no biggie. Works great. |
|
| KC8YKQ |
Rating: |
2005-05-23 | |
| Nice Rig - Low Cost |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
| The FT-7800 is a dual-bander with a lot of nice features for not a lot of money. I use the rig as a scanner more than I use it as a dual-band ham xceiver. The receiver is excellent. The audio tone quality is not as crisp as my FT-1500, but is still quite decent. Transmit is fine with good audio reports. |
|
| KC2NUQ |
Rating: |
2005-05-16 | |
| Excellent Rig - Buy The Programming Software |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I bought this rig for use as a base station. My daily commute is about 3 miles.
I LOVE this radio. This display is very readable. The audio is extremely clear. The "hyper memory" function is a mystery to me as well, especially the part about it overwriting existing settings if you don't use it properly.
I HIGHLY suggest that you invest in the RT Systems programming software. I have a VX-2r and exported to settings from it and then imported them into the software for this radio. You still have to do a little manual keying, but it does save a ton of time. It also makes updating the radio very easy.
I initially placed the radio on a shelf. It ended up sitting on the faceplate in the front and the fan housing in the back. It also tended to move around and had no air moving across the bottom. I went to Michael's Crafts and purchased a black foam door hanger for $1.39. I cut two strips from it and placed the radio on top of them. There is now airflow across the bottom and the radio stays in one place. |
|
| VE3DKL |
Rating: |
2005-05-08 | |
| Great rig |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| Great unit works very well, had many mobile radios from yaesu the 24 26 28 ft 60 now 7800. The rt programming is a must with this rig worth all its money. The only problem i have is trying to understand exactly how the hyper memory works, the manual is vague in that area and i tried everything. Maybe somebody can drop me a note it would be very appreciated. Other then that i'm very pleased looking to buy a second unit. Somebody please e mail djkristo@nt.net |
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| KE5BGE |
Rating: |
2005-05-05 | |
| Complicated Programming But Good |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| Just bought the the FT 7800R a couple of weeks ago as my first amateur radio. I have had no experience programing CCCS or ENC codes or frequencies to memory before so this was quite an endevour to do with this radio. I have finally figured it out now and have found it to be simple as long as you follow the directions exactly, otherwise you will mess it up. The radio's performance has been super and I get very good audio reports. Its got a real good receiver as well. Would have given it a 5, but because of the unuser friendly programing it got a 4 from me. Maybe in time I will learn more about these high tech radios and it will become easier with experience. |
|
| N2RIC |
Rating: |
2005-04-29 | |
| Great radio! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I've got mine mounted in my car. Other than the menu operations being a bit confusing at times (I keep the manual handy), I'm enjoying this radio quite a bit. |
|
| WA0DTH |
Rating: |
2005-04-20 | |
| Pretty good radio |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
To me this radio makes up for the poor performance I experienced with the FT 7100M.
The case style and display are quite similar to the 7100. Which is a feature I liked.
The fast scanning and wide receiver coverage is great. And the addition of the weather alarm is a handy thing.
Some Items observed:
In Mobile the mic cord is a little short and plugs in on the right side of the unit. Thats ok I guess if your mobiling in Europe.
IMD performance is good compared compared against a Kenwood TM G707 and Icom V8000.
Speaker seems a little small and some rattle at higher audio levels. Larger, cushioned speaker would be nice.
Like the 7100M I still have to hold the mic to where I dont talk directly into the mic port.
I find I have to talk over the top end of the mic to stop the poping and some raspyness in the speech. It sounds exceptable holding the mic 1/2 inch below my mouth. Over all the modulation is good communication quality. Seems many lower frequencies in the mic audio are rolled off.
I find the fan noise to be the quietest between the V8000 and TM G707.
Over all a good value in a dual bander. |
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