I came across an unusual quirk on the 2950dx whilst out mobile, quite often when you turn it on without alternator running it would come up with a blanl display,turn it off then on again it sorted itself, never ever noticed it with engine running, can only assume its very touchy to voltage drop,I didn't investigate it further as radio owner returned it to seller because of that and an issue outside of its performance.
I've heard others mention similar, but if you want to be mistaken for a taxi then the 2950 is certainly hard to beat,I hated the layout and still don't see the point of it having a clarifier at all nevermind an open one as its got vfo style readout. A clarifier only works on rx therefore as soon as you touch it your tx'ing and rx'ing on different frequencies,guaranteed to cause mayhem when talking to more than one station.
As for the S9, its a nice looking radio packed with shite that's useless like echo or as I call it tadger indicator,its highly overpriced,build quality is third rate at best,replace the moron mode switch (echo) with a speech processor it may have been semi decent, but it would still suck on build quality.now we come to the faggoty sore on the eyes led display,hmmm,would have been much better with red led's.
I'd rather have a rci 3900 hp anyday,looks nicer, has all the crap you'll ever not need and probably much cheaper than both the radios you mention, I just don't see the point on spending extra money for radios that do nothing to enhance performance over something basic like the rci3900hp that will do the same job,much better investing that extra cash into a better antenna or a kl203p that will achieve something, IMO the rci3900hp is THE best looking radio on the market today and one I'd snap up in a minute if it was imported to the UK, simple and straight forward with pretty standard layout.also comes with the benefit if your unlucky enough to get busted pirating 11m its a lot less to lose too,yet does the same job.
incidentally I practice what I preach,have 2 different ss3900's,one standard early crt and one eghp (to remind me off you guys,lol), plus 2 SS360FM variants,all of which do everything I need to work the world when you add a kl203p or a zetagi B300p and a decent antenna be it mobile or base.
Another I'd look at is the ss6900/maas dx 5000 and all its clones or even the cre 8900.
At the end of the day,when it comes to 11m radios then ergonomics play a far bigger part in choice than performance,as there's not much to choose between any of them in real life on air situations, sure some might give slightly better results on test gear,but I've yet to meet a radio user that talks to test gear in 3 decades of using export radios.
