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Yaesu FT-8800RSo... Why this radio?.I was using a PRM80 in the car which is a great radio in it's own right, especially in the city, as it has good immunity to pager inference and is quite rugged. However, the downside is that the radio is chanelised and you can not select individual frequencies.Further, the club I was with was starting to get into providing communications for car rallies, triathlons and such things. Often situations arose where the car had to be parked at a location away from where I needed to be. I needed a radio with the ability to do cross band repeat Decisions, decisions!.I considered the available radios form the big three; Icom IC-2820H, Kenwood TM-V71A, and Yaesu FT-8800R. The Icom didn't have favourable reviews, so it was quickly eliminated, and the Kenwood and the Yaesu were neck and neck. I basically came down to price and availability. There is no Kenwood dealer and only one Yaesu dealer in Queensland that I know of. I was about to place and order with Strictly Ham in Victoria (VK3) for the Yaesu as it was a little cheaper than the Kenwood when I heard that the Brisbane Amateur Radio Club BARCfest was due. Just as well I held off because Kyle Communications had a display at BARCfest and also some specials on the FT-8800R, with a significant saving on the list price and also a saving of around AU$20 shipping from VK3, my mind was made up for me. Programming.I didn't have the programming interface for the FT-8800 so everything was done via the front panel. As tedious as this may sound (and it was... sort of) once you get a rhythm up it's not so bad, just time consuming. Pretty much everything can be programmed to memory, and once done you forget about it. If you have a memory set for say 10 watts, you can program either the P1 or P2 buttons on the microphone to cycle through the power settings, handy if your are a little too far away from the repeaters and not quite cutting the mustard. Cross band repeater function.Like I said before, the main reason I bought this radio was because I needed cross-band-repeat. Cross-band-repeat takes a signal on say 146.525mHz and retransmits it on another frequency (on 70cm) and vice-versa. This is handy, as in my case I can park my vehicle away from where I need to be, say in a car park or on a high hill and can use a hand held to make the hop from my check point to the vehicle and to the event base or repeater. Great for when you are stuck in a valley or between buildings. To set up cross band repeater is quite straight forward, simply:
The one thing you need to be aware of is that if you are using a repeater that is quite busy or if you are using high power battery drain may be an issue. I have used this function quite often on the 50 watt setting and never had a problem with the radio overheating. The task of installation.Unlike my wife's car there are no problems with drilling holes all over the place to mount the radio. The body of the radio is mounted under the passenger seat, with all of the wiring routed under the centre console to the head unit and microphone. This is quite unobtrusive and neat. The only thing that may be a problem with this location, is if you car leaks or has bad seals you could drown the radio while doing a water crossing. My preference would have been to mount the body of the radio in the overhead (home-brew) parcel shelf but I didn't have one at the time and I have made a few water crossing since installation without any problem. I even came out from work one afternoon to find my car in water about a third the way up the doors during the January 2011 Brisbane Floods and there was no problem. This is one occasion I didn't open the drivers door, instead gaining entry through the back tailgate. The extension speaker is secured to the side of the transmission tunnel just above my left knee, this doesn't interfere with clutch operation and can be easily heard over the road noise. Yes the car is right hand drive. The negative side of the radio is grounded to one of the seat bolts and the positive is double insulated and comes in with the rest of the wiring loom behind the passenger side kick panel, from their it continues on to the firewall and is connected directly to the battery via a fuse. The antenna.Antenna selection was easy, I simply duplicated what my wife had on her car. The Nagoya EL-77 2m/70cm antenna had performed flawlessly for nearly a year for her. So I bought another one for my car, and mounted it to the bull-bar, again Dave, VK4ICE came to the rescue. OperationThis radio has loud transmitted audio. I often get asked to back off the microphone a bit. Having said that though, I have never had a complaint about background road noise. Unlike the Icom, all bar what you program into the P1 and P2 buttons is controlled via the front panel. Although this sounds bad, it isn't for me, as I have the head unit mounted in an easily visible location and the only buttons I need to use while on the move are the "On/ Off", "Channel/ Memory" knob and volume controls. The only thing that is a bit of an annoyance is if I forget which band is "Primary" and I call or reply to someone on the wrong band. The problem for this can be rectified easily by replacing the nut between the steering wheel and the seat! ConclusionWell that's my take on the FT-8800R, not extensive I know, but I hope it helps you decide if you want to own one or not. For the money you could do a lot worse BCNU Adam VK4IMBrisbane, Queensland. AUSTRALIA |
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