On the radio market DVDRA (day of the radio amateur) I bought this cheap and well-reviewed transceiver because my FT-60R was getting a bit old and battery life was getting limited.
I’m going to keep this review short because there should be enough other reviews on the internet which are more detailed. I want to offer a quick overview for anyone interested in getting this transceiver.
Short specs:
Frequency Coverage: VHF: 137-174 MHz UHF: 420-520 Mhz (fully unlocked)
Power: 4-5 Watts HIGH, 1 Watt LOW
Basic to-be-expectected features: send/receive CTCSS, repeater shifts, alphanumeric memory tags, vox, lock, light, DTMF, computer programming (with separately available cable)
Memories: 128 channels
Battery: 1700 mAh Li-ion
Pros:
- light
- cheap
- easy basic operation
- extensive (not continuous) frequency coverage, also suited to monitoring non amateur band use
- decent battery life
- comes with 220VAC/12VDC table charger
- internal flashlight (quite handy, I already used it a couple of times)
- accessories like speaker mics and additional batteries are decently priced at the supplier I got it from
Cons:
- housing is strong but of lower quality than mainstream radio amateur gear
- s-meter is more or less useless, it pegs at weak signals and seems to malfunction when squelch is disabled for monitoring
- manual programming is even more a pain in the ass than with the big brands
- generally hard to setup for anything other than basic simplex w/o CTCSS
Summary:
This is a very cheap but feature-rich hand transceiver. When it comes to basic use it is very competitive with the large brands of amateur gear. However, it has some rough edges that could annoy more advanced and demanding users.
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