I also got one at the $200 price from Giga Parts. ?At that price I could not pass it up. ?I was looking for a mobile, and at $200, it was in the same price range as the Chinese radios I considered. ?I had wondered how many other people grabbed one at that price. ?So far I am mostly satisfied with it but found a few things that could have been better.
First the good. ?Audio is better than any of the other radios I have here including the FT-897D that is normally connected to the VHF-UHF antenna at home. ?It is loud and clear, and rarely needs to go beyond half scale. ?It receives well on HAM bands as well as aircraft (AM), marine, railroad (FMN), and some public service frequencies while still connected to my Diamond x-50 antenna. ?Easy to program manually once you figure out their manuals (setting PL tones is in the Advanced Manual, and not even mentioned in the basic manual. ?Display is easy to see, and easy to shift between freq. and call sign display. ?I think I will like the operating interface for use in the car. ?I also like the fact that it does not display channel while scanning, eliminates distraction. ?Signal and audio reports are both good via local repeaters.
Biggest negative is that it does NOT support memory banks, and their automatic Band Group mode is completely worthless. That is because almost everything you have programmed outside the ham bands will be in the VHF Group (rail, marine, public service) that you may wish to scan occasionally. ?Also, scanning by group limits you to just VHF OR UHF. ?Does anyone have any idea why Yaesu does not include memory bank support on their recent radios?
?A more minor thing is memory skip. ?If I skip a memory there is no indication it is skipped (my HTs have a symbol next to the memory number if skipped), it takes several button pushes to go in to and check if a frequency is skipped. ?PMS scan has som quirks too.
I did not get the Blue Tooth module since BT on my FT-3D was really bad. ?If any one has tried it I would love to hear how it worked (audio quality, noise, what will it connect to). ?
p.s. - Price is back up tp $260 at Giga Parts now.
N8AAX Steve
