Ah someone else who watches TRX Bench.
Radios are like cars. I'm sure we can all agree the PT Cruiser is a stinking hideous looking pile of crap but there are people who love them. Conversely the Bugatti Veyron is unbelievable but to me they're butt ugly.
From having hands on with quite a few different amateur brands and models in their range ergonomics is the answer. Performance is one consideration as is price but you can have the best performing or the best bang per buck radio in the world however if you find it awkward to use and/or are not happy with how you have to do something you do regularly on it or you can't just stand looking at it for you that performance and bang per buck counts for nothing if you can't stand to use it. Your picture of the 9900 immediately reminds me of one radio that fits into that category, the Yaesu FT857. I find it hideous to use precisely because of a similar button arrangement on the front panel. And yes I know that last sentence makes no sense given I've just bought a McKinley with a row of buttons just below the LCD. Also another thing that makes no sense given I've bought a McKinley is I won't have any amateur HF radio that doesn't have the RF gain on the front panel. However that does make sense because the McKinley is a single band radio so you can set it and forget it for where you currently are whereas on a HF set as you head from 10m to 160m you need to keep reducing the RF gain as you go down in frequency.
So as to why not the Anyclones for me personally....
Zero to do with the performance, they work just fine.
Prefer a front firing speaker especially when using it in a car. Blame Kenwood and Motorola commercial VHF mobiles for that.
Can't be bothered with faffing around programming it and whilst you can buy them pre-programmed I can guarantee I'll not be happy with how they decided to do it.
Being able to get UKFM channels without having to faff about is quite high on the list for me and there's only a handful of radios that'll do that, even less in export mode.
6900s and the clones, don't like the look of them mainly because of the group of 8 buttons on the top left of the front panel, don't like that style of channel knob. That channel knob is more suited to a pure channelised radio but the radio can do VFO style tuning and for that you want a round one.
7900...band and frequency buttons in the wrong place. Would be better on the right hand side. Oh and the LCD display looks cheap. I find Strykers the same in that regard.
9900...reminds me too much of the FT857.
Lincoln II, again the channel knob, should have kept to the style of the Lincoln especially if you're going to have a faux VFO mode.
As you can see from above ergonomics is a very personal individual thing. You'll look at that list and think I'm mental but no doubt there'll be something you can't stand about a device which will put you off getting one, radio or otherwise, and people will think you're mental too.
No doubt at some point I'll try one. One advantage to CBs is they're cheap enough that you can get more than one, especially when you've just sold up your HF amateur gear.
Radios are like cars. I'm sure we can all agree the PT Cruiser is a stinking hideous looking pile of crap but there are people who love them. Conversely the Bugatti Veyron is unbelievable but to me they're butt ugly.
From having hands on with quite a few different amateur brands and models in their range ergonomics is the answer. Performance is one consideration as is price but you can have the best performing or the best bang per buck radio in the world however if you find it awkward to use and/or are not happy with how you have to do something you do regularly on it or you can't just stand looking at it for you that performance and bang per buck counts for nothing if you can't stand to use it. Your picture of the 9900 immediately reminds me of one radio that fits into that category, the Yaesu FT857. I find it hideous to use precisely because of a similar button arrangement on the front panel. And yes I know that last sentence makes no sense given I've just bought a McKinley with a row of buttons just below the LCD. Also another thing that makes no sense given I've bought a McKinley is I won't have any amateur HF radio that doesn't have the RF gain on the front panel. However that does make sense because the McKinley is a single band radio so you can set it and forget it for where you currently are whereas on a HF set as you head from 10m to 160m you need to keep reducing the RF gain as you go down in frequency.
So as to why not the Anyclones for me personally....
Zero to do with the performance, they work just fine.
Prefer a front firing speaker especially when using it in a car. Blame Kenwood and Motorola commercial VHF mobiles for that.
Can't be bothered with faffing around programming it and whilst you can buy them pre-programmed I can guarantee I'll not be happy with how they decided to do it.
Being able to get UKFM channels without having to faff about is quite high on the list for me and there's only a handful of radios that'll do that, even less in export mode.
6900s and the clones, don't like the look of them mainly because of the group of 8 buttons on the top left of the front panel, don't like that style of channel knob. That channel knob is more suited to a pure channelised radio but the radio can do VFO style tuning and for that you want a round one.
7900...band and frequency buttons in the wrong place. Would be better on the right hand side. Oh and the LCD display looks cheap. I find Strykers the same in that regard.
9900...reminds me too much of the FT857.
Lincoln II, again the channel knob, should have kept to the style of the Lincoln especially if you're going to have a faux VFO mode.
As you can see from above ergonomics is a very personal individual thing. You'll look at that list and think I'm mental but no doubt there'll be something you can't stand about a device which will put you off getting one, radio or otherwise, and people will think you're mental too.
No doubt at some point I'll try one. One advantage to CBs is they're cheap enough that you can get more than one, especially when you've just sold up your HF amateur gear.
