I was bored…

Charge that battery.
That actually means it's got "enough battery power". My experience with this radio is that "enough battery power" is enough if you're already walking over to the charger. The battery life on it sucks, many disappoint.

1655409257148.png

ETA: You get a few hours on receive, maybe 5 hours if you're listening to a frequency nobody uses. If you plan to actually use it, buy more batteries.
 
Now that I shit on the radio, I should mention Yaesu has free software to program the radio and it takes a USB cable, no special adapter needed. I just found that recently and I thought it was a nice touch. I wish they did that for all of their radios; you know they have it for themselves.

For some reason I'm rubbish at programming repeaters. Most radios do almost all of the work for you, yet somehow I fat finger it and end up turning on the "DO NOT EVER WORK" setting in a deep menu. The software helps in that department.
 
you f***ing guys...civilians read these post too. what the hell kind of radio is this? a little background please, what are you going to be doing with it? can this bounce signals to australia and back? i know you guys like that stuff, bouncing signals, repeaters and such. is this for emergency use or what? come on, give up some info for us dummies.
 
That actually means it's got "enough battery power". My experience with this radio is that "enough battery power" is enough if you're already walking over to the charger. The battery life on it sucks, many disappoint.

View attachment 627349

ETA: You get a few hours on receive, maybe 5 hours if you're listening to a frequency nobody uses. If you plan to actually use it, buy more batteries.

Most HTs if that bitch isn't a solid bar that means its dying rapidly. Maybe RX only for awhile.
 
That actually means it's got "enough battery power". My experience with this radio is that "enough battery power" is enough if you're already walking over to the charger. The battery life on it sucks, many disappoint.

View attachment 627349

ETA: You get a few hours on receive, maybe 5 hours if you're listening to a frequency nobody uses. If you plan to actually use it, buy more batteries.
I own one. It doesn't have the battery life of an FT60, but it's not horrible. I run it on low power, and listen more than I talk, but I can get two days of use before I have to charge.
I love the fact that it isn't loaded with features that I will never use, and the digital modes are great. Much easier to use than DMR.
 
you f***ing guys...civilians read these post too. what the hell kind of radio is this? a little background please, what are you going to be doing with it? can this bounce signals to australia and back? i know you guys like that stuff, bouncing signals, repeaters and such. is this for emergency use or what? come on, give up some info for us dummies.
It covers the 2 meter FM and the 440 FM bands. It also has a wide coverage receiver, so mine can pick up National Weather broadcasts, police, fire, air craft etc. It also does Yaesu Fusion digital mode, so you can link your radio to the Internet. That means you can walk about with your walkie talkie in the back yard, and talk to Australia, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world. Most radios use the air to send signals to the other station. Digital modes can use the Internet to send your signal to the other side of the planet. Meaning radio, through the air to a device called a hotspot, that connects to the Internet. Signal to the other side of the world on the Internet. Then back into a hotspot, through the air, to the destination radio. The last conversation, I was in Mass, and was talking to someone in Okinawa Japan.
 
Last edited:
It covers the 2 meter FM and the 440 FM bands. It also has a wide coverage receiver, so mine can pick up National Weather broadcasts, police, fire, air craft etc. It also does Yaesu Fusion digital mode, so you can link your radio to the Internet. That means you can walk about with your walkie talkie in the back yard, and talk to Australia, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world. Most radios use the air to send signals to the other station. Digital modes can use the Internet to send your signal to the other side of the planet. Meaning radio, through the air to a device called a hotspot, that connects to the Internet. Signal to the other side of the world on the Internet. Then back into a hotspot, through the air, to the destination radio. The last conversation, I was in Mass, and was talking to someone in Okinawa Japan.
thank you!
 
It covers the 2 meter FM and the 440 FM bands. It also has a wide coverage receiver, so mine can pick up National Weather broadcasts, police, fire, air craft etc. It also does Yaesu Fusion digital mode, so you can link your radio to the Internet. That means you can walk about with your walkie talkie in the back yard, and talk to Australia, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world. Most radios use the air to send signals to the other station. Digital modes can use the Internet to send your signal to the other side of the planet. Meaning radio, through the air to a device called a hotspot, that connects to the Internet. Signal to the other side of the world on the Internet. Then back into a hotspot, through the air, to the destination radio. The last conversation, I was in Mass, and was talking to someone in Okinawa Japan.
How do you go about selecting a "room"? I've mostly connected to AmericaLink, but even that can be completely dead. And then half the time I hear people asking if anyone can hear them. But I've talked to a few folks on there, it is pretty neat to have a repeater to the world.

I use this for looking up reflectors, and have a Pistar hotspot. It works pretty good, although I can never remember the sequence of buttons on the FT-70D to connect/disconnect/etc. Yaesu could have made connecting to Fusion stuff much easier than they did. I have to guess the newer radios with the fancy displays work much better.

 
I have an HRI-200, hooked to an FTM-100, hooked to a peanut butter sandwich-sized Windows PC running Fusion.
On my FT70, I hit "F" then "AMS". The 70 transmits, and after maybe 5 seconds, the HRI responds with a tone, and a "Connected" message on the display. Then either select a room from the 5 room, memory locations you set up, or select "En", and enter the room number. Then hit "AMS". It will beep again, and then show the room you've connected to. To get out of "room selection mode" so you can change the frequency / or frequency memory selection, hold down the "mode" key into the radio beeps. The top knob will then move between frequency or frequency memory selections instead of Fusion room selections.
 
Sorry, not how do you physically do it, but how do you look at a list of rooms with meaningless names and choose one? There must be 1,000 in the PiStar room. Some use their country's prefix, which is handy, but many don't.

I haven't looked into it, but there are two programmable buttons on the keypad. It would be cool if one could be set to "Connect to Fusion" and the other "Disconnect". I often forget how to disconnect and just cycle power, but I use a hotspot so if I do that the hotspot stays connected to the room until I cycle power there too.

I don't use the Fusion stuff very often, mostly when there are world events and I want to see what people are saying in other parts of the country/world.
 
Ok … after a few weeks I can say the battery life indicator is lame. But overall … 4 stars… nice radio. I think I’ll put my VX6R on secondary status. Next project is installing the Kenwood tm-v71 in my truck, it’s been a my desk radio for a few years now.

you f***ing guys...civilians read these post too. what the hell kind of radio is this? a little background please, what are you going to be doing with it? can this bounce signals to australia and back? i know you guys like that stuff, bouncing signals, repeaters and such. is this for emergency use or what? come on, give up some info for us dummies.
I’m addition to the response above, If you are curious I’d start here…


View: https://youtu.be/tgH1UuKfT74


There are prob 8 million videos on YouTube about ham radio but that’s one of the latest intro video out there.

If you get your license I’ll send you a free Baofeng from my collection lol.
 
Sorry, not how do you physically do it, but how do you look at a list of rooms with meaningless names and choose one? There must be 1,000 in the PiStar room. Some use their country's prefix, which is handy, but many don't.

I haven't looked into it, but there are two programmable buttons on the keypad. It would be cool if one could be set to "Connect to Fusion" and the other "Disconnect". I often forget how to disconnect and just cycle power, but I use a hotspot so if I do that the hotspot stays connected to the room until I cycle power there too.

I don't use the Fusion stuff very often, mostly when there are world events and I want to see what people are saying in other parts of the country/world.
You can ask hams what rooms they hang out in. Americalink is popular as is Wolfpack. You can also look online and see what rooms have the most people in them.
 
Anybody use a mag mount or similar antenna in their vehicle with an HT? I'm not ready to install a radio in the car, but I thought running my HT to a mag mount antenna might be a good stepping stone. Thanksgiving I have a long drive to my sister's so I thought it might be a good opportunity to try it out. Good idea? Dumb idea? Suggestions for antenna that I won't lose on the highway?
 
Anybody use a mag mount or similar antenna in their vehicle with an HT? I'm not ready to install a radio in the car, but I thought running my HT to a mag mount antenna might be a good stepping stone. Thanksgiving I have a long drive to my sister's so I thought it might be a good opportunity to try it out. Good idea? Dumb idea? Suggestions for antenna that I won't lose on the highway?

For 2m i would just use a 5/8ths wave mag mount. using hts mobile sucks but it won’t be entirely unusable if you’re working strong repeaters.
 
Go for it! Using a Mag Mount antenna on the roof of my car has increased both reception and transmission ranges. By how much? I have no idea, but it's way better. I'm using a Yaseu FT3Dr with a Diamond 7cm/2m antenna. The most noticeable difference is when using APRS. The increase in activity is very apparent. Now, if i only knew what I was doing, it's be even better!
 
Go for it! Using a Mag Mount antenna on the roof of my car has increased both reception and transmission ranges. By how much? I have no idea, but it's way better. I'm using a Yaseu FT3Dr with a Diamond 7cm/2m antenna. The most noticeable difference is when using APRS. The increase in activity is very apparent. Now, if i only knew what I was doing, it's be even better!
Funny you should mention that. I keep trying to convince myself to get a radio with APRS capability but I certainly don't need more people tracking me, I have nobody to send messages to, and don't know what else it really does. It feels like 1994 AOL for radio.

Using the HT in the car is a test run to see if I want a radio in the car, which I am pretty sure I don't.
 
A CB would be an exercise in confirmation bias. Although this may be too.
Actually in all honesty setting up an 11M rig is far more challenging than hooking up an HT. It's way easier to fail at doing that believe it or not.. .

Like if you hook up with mfj 5/8 wave 2 meter antenna throw it on your roof in a clear spot you're pretty much good to go and you automatically beaten about 80% of the 2 m setups involving a handheld in a car. There's a lot of people running junk like cell phone imitation antennas and other garbage like that because they had to get approval from their wife or some b*******...... 🤣 it's very difficult to do much better than a 5/8 wave on a mobile for 2 m anyways. Mfj makes a lot of junk but that particular antenna it was actually pretty good....
 
This one? Looks like it comes with an adapter for an HT, too. It doesn't say what so it could be anything.

Uh, it does say and it's BNC. Dumb ass.

 
Funny you should mention that. I keep trying to convince myself to get a radio with APRS capability but I certainly don't need more people tracking me, I have nobody to send messages to, and don't know what else it really does. It feels like 1994 AOL for radio.

Using the HT in the car is a test run to see if I want a radio in the car, which I am pretty sure I don't.
Well, Damn. When you put it that way, you’ve pretty much summed up my entire experience in ham. Every once in a while my local repeaters have something interesting, but thats like once a year. As for aprs, I’ve sent a couple of emails (which thrilled me!) but like you, I don’t need anyone else tracking me. You pretty much ch nailed it with the AOL for radio comment.

Now, back to my *ahem* entertainment…
 
Back
Top Bottom