Advice on a good MOBILE Ham Radio for General Class?
LV NASCAR FAN 6 asked:
Getting my general class license next month. Was wondering if anyone has any recommendations on a good radio for mobile use in my truck. I’ve been looking at the Yaesu FT-8800 and FT-8900. Anyone use anything ele and like it and why?
Getting my general class license next month. Was wondering if anyone has any recommendations on a good radio for mobile use in my truck. I’ve been looking at the Yaesu FT-8800 and FT-8900. Anyone use anything ele and like it and why?
I’m principally an HF operator, so my main rig is an Alinco DX-77T, which is a pretty nice radio.
I have a Yaesu FT 2200 for 2 meter FM, and I have a dual band HT for both 2 and 70cm. There isn’t a lot of 440 operation around here, so it’s my first foray into UHF, and I’m trying it out.
I looked at the ARRL product reviews. If you’re a member you can get a better angle on the radio you want, the reviews are in pdf format going back a long way, and running up to November of 2008 (the new issue of QST arrived a few days ago in my mailbox).
I can give you a sense of what I read. The 8800 seems like a nice dualbander, but the reviewer suggested that it will take some time to get used to programming it. The instructions call for you to hold the button down momentarily, which for him was a second or two. When he did this, he overshot the mark he was after. He found that the time they saw as momentarily, was much less. You could get used to it with time, however. The detachable front seems like a great option, if you plan to hide the main part of your radio somewhere out of sight of thieves, never a bad idea, particularly if you will be out of the truck for any period of time, and in our economic situation, a transceiver would look expensive even if the person didn’t know what it was for, and I’d sooner lose a 100.00 remote control head than a 400.00 transceiver.
The putting the rig in a location that was more open to the air, rather than under the dash, might be a good idea. The reviewer said it ran a little hot, and while the fan runs by thermostat, I’d say more space around the back of the rig the better.
I had only read a few paragraphs in the review for the 8900, and I thought again. It is a quadbander, but the reviewer, who was station manager for W1AW and works with lots of radios, right out of the box, said that he had to read the manual before operating it. I always do that, anyway, but it sort of made me leery of this.
The other thing I noticed was that the rig runs FM on the whole 10 meter band, while the allocation is only at the very top, so you’d have to watch your band edges pretty carefully.
Enjoy the rigs, and enjoy the hobby.
AB9BD first licensed in 1968 (as WN9AOF).