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Reviews For: Yaesu FT-2600M

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

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Review Summary For : Yaesu FT-2600M
Reviews: 2MSRP: 219.95
Description:
Incredible mobile radio with great features.
Product is not in production
More Info: http://www.yaesu.com/amateur/ft2600m.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0024
FORMER_W3AMF Rating: 2014-12-20
I Like It Time Owned: more than 12 months.
The rig has been used only at my fixed station, never mobile. I use it only "for talking" on simplex and repeaters. It has not had a lot of use over the years because I prefer the MF and HF bands and CW. It is coupled to a small, vertical yagi at 49 feet and does a good job. I gave it a 4 because the microphone cable cover has deteriorated for no apparent reason.
WD4VA Rating: 2011-09-13
Great Voice and Data Radio Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I've been successfully using FT-2600M for over 10 years. Recently, I've been experiencing some issues, but that's probably reasonable for a rig that I've used so extensively.

I purchased another FT-2600M (used) one year ago, when searching for a packet radio. Comparing the FT-2600M against the newer models, I was sad the newer Yaesu 2m mobile rigs no longer have the data jack on the back of the radio.

Pluses to the FT-2600M over the newer Yaesu 2m rigs:
1. Data jack on the back for connecting TNCs, Echolink interfaces, etc... It's nice to not have to sacrifice the mic and speaker jack when you want to interface the radio with another device. It's also nice to not have to deal with volume settings on TNC connections.
2. Built-in ability to use 1200bps and/or 9600bps data rates. Why is this not included in the newer Yaesu rigs???
3. 8-character alpha tags, instead of the 6-character limit in the newer rigs. I find this useful when programming far off repeaters that I don't use often, or have to swing the beam to reach. I usually leave these channels on SKIP and give them a 8-character alpha tag, to help me remember where the repeater is when manually scanning. The difference here between 6 and 8 characters is pretty large in my opinion.

There are, of course, features in the newer rigs that I do wish the 2600M supported, such as memory banks, and perhaps WIRES (although that isn't very popular). I like the NOAA feature on the newer rigs when mobile, but can live without it here in the shack, where I have a dedicated NOAA radio.

I can't give the radio a 5.0/5, because I have had "blips" along the way. And, while any radio is bound to have some blips, I can't ignore them and rate the radio a 5 (shame they don't have a 1-10 scale, where I'd have given this a 9).

Some of the 2600M's suffered from memory issues when the power source dropped out and the radio was on. I've seen this in one of my father's 2600's. I've also recently had trouble with mine powering off on the higher power output settings (not an SWR issue... checking the wiring).

Over all, I'm still impressed with this radio and will continue to buy used ones for packet/APRS/echolink/etc... applications.