Yaesu FT-60R

Past experience

I had the VX-150 for over 5 years and it went everywhere with me, to the shops, to work, even interstate on bossiness trips and holidays. I even used it mobile for a few months in conjunction with with a 25 watt amplifier and 1/4 wave vertical. So like the saying goes, When you're on a good thing... Stick to it!.

Why upgrade if you're so happy?

Like I said elsewhere, the club I was with was starting to get into providing communications for car rallies, triathlons and the like, for this reason I bought an FT-8800R. So I reasoned that a dual band hand-held would give more versatility than a single band unit.

I mentioned earlier that both the VX-150 and the FT-60 were quite similar. So similar in fact, that the speaker mic. and battery case are inter-changeable between the two radios. I also had an after market dual band Comet antenna with SMA connector which would also work with the new radio. These facts alone made the decision to upgrade much easier.

Plus the price was right because Strictly Ham had a sale on. Hmm seems to be recurring theme here of me taking advantage of sales...

Programming.

As with just about all newer radios, pretty much everything can be programmed to individual memories. This was done manually as I didn't have the programming cable. In hind sight a programming cable would have made this part much easier. But if your tight on cash and have a bit of time, manually programming this radio is relatively straight forward.

The antenna.

The rubber ducky antenna that comes with the FT-60 is little better than a dummy load. Don't get me wrong, you will crack the local repeater but your signal will probably be marginal unless you are parked within cooee of the repeater site.

The comet antenna makes a huge difference to signal strength, often four (4) or five (5) "S" units. It's not unusual for me to sit in the lunch room at work and crack a repeater 30 or 40km (20 to 25 miles) away. So for the extra AU$25 its well worth the investment.

Operation

The FT-60 like the VX-150 is a tough radio. Solidly built with a die cast frame, and a belt clip that will turn your finger blue if you leave it on there for to long.

Once programmed, the radio is very easy to operate, there is nothing to remember, unless you need to make excursions from the memories to the VFO, and even then, you can nut it out easily enough if you haven't done it for a while.

One thing to watch though, is that you have to keep the duty cycle low when on high power as this radio will get hot and shut down if you have too many long overs. For me though I use low power most of the time and have never had a problem. If I do have a need to transmit a little further I just set the FT-8800R into cross-band-repeat and all is good.

Conclusion

For a cheap and capable hand-held, the FT-60 fits the bill nicely. Sure there are cheaper Chinese radios on the market which will acquit themselves well. But for a sturdy well built transceiver that will take a knock or two, the FT-60 is up there with the best of them.

BCNU