Earlier in January, I blogged some first impressions about the VX-8R. It’s now three months later, and I’ve used my radio on some more extensive field tests. I’m considering selling my VX-8R for a 7R, for the following reasons:
- I generally need five hours of receive with medium transmission. I only get about 3.5 hours worth of receive with the standard VX-8R battery. This is not really acceptable. (At risk of being “get off my lawn”, Karl Ramm comments that his old Icom W32 from the 90s got 12 hours of receive.)
- The AA battery adapter is laughable, giving maybe 20min of receive time before flagging. The ability to run digital cameras on AA batteries had given me the false impression that I’d be able to do the same for a radio, really this adapter is only fit for emergency receive situations.
- The remaining battery indicator unreliable, going from 8.5V to 7.5V, and then dropping straight to zero. This is the defect I sent mine back in for last time, but I saw this problem in the replacement, and a friend confirmed that he saw the same on his.
- The radio gets quite hot during operation. I’d never noticed the temperature with the 7R.
- Everyone else around here owns a 7R, which severely limits the swappability of various components (in particular, batteries).
I really am going to miss the dedicated stereo jack and slimmer (and, in my opinion, better) interface, but these really are deal breakers. C’ést la vie.
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The VX-8R is the first Ham radio I’ve ever owned; I have used the VX-7R before, but the extent of my usage of it was someone handing me the radio is “Here is the radio preconfigured to the frequencies you’ll need; here’s how squelch works; here’s how to debug common problems; don’t fuck it up.” Here are my impressions of the VX-8R
- Despite the sturdy construction, I am sending it back for warranty replacement. The battery indicator is defective; it is stuck at 100% battery while discharging, and 0% battery when charging. According to a HRO representative, this was highly unusual. Having to send the radio back for replacement is kind of obnoxious, but eh, what can you do.
- The Yaesu tries hard to be non-modal, but when it is it’s slightly difficult to tell what keys do what. For example, when scanning, pressing the PTT terminates the scan, but so does BAND and the arrow keys. PTT is actually a fairly reliable method for getting out of FOO mode
- I love the scanning interface. Hold UP/DOWN to initiate scanning, use the dial to nudge it if it gets stock on the wrong thing, whack PTT when you hear something interesting.
- The stereo headphone jack is by far one of the best things about the VX-8R, and partially offsets the suckage of needing two adapters in order to get a split speaker and PTT microphone set. I’ve, uh, been listening to a lot of FM radio with my Yaesu (perhaps not the most interesting use, but a use nonetheless!) The stereo plug is contained inside a somewhat appreciable well, so you may have some difficulty getting shorter jacks to plug in soundly.
- On the subject of mods, it appears that despite having been released about a year ago, the VX-8R still has no software mod software available. The current hardware mod only opens up MARS/CAP transmission frequencies.
Still no word about the microphone dilemma; I might just pony up some cash for a Pryme headset (they’re a smidge more expensive than I’d like them to be).
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Over winter break, I purchased a Yaesu VX-8R, the newest model from Yaesu and the successor to the VX-7R, which is favored by many in the MIT community. Deciding that this was the particular radio I wanted to buy was difficult: purchasing a (cheaper) VX-7R would mean I could tap into the immense pool of knowledge that has already rallied itself around this particular model. But my father was willing to put down the extra $50 for the newer version, and so I decided to be experimental.
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