I have also heard the Yaesu will still honor the warranty if someone performs the mod. Have you heard the same thing?
but now its a tough call the vx-8r or the vx-8dr hummm??
I guess that depends on how serious of an APRS & GPS user you're going to be with the VX-8 and whether or not the extra APRS features are worth the extra cost to you.
Hopefully (and from what I've read) this is just a bad unit and not a bad design.
Anybody have any similar experiences?
The power output was just below 5 watts.
It sounds like the radio is working fine then. Perhaps something is wrong with the stock antenna supplied with your rig. Do you have another antenna you can try with? It certainly is odd if the repeater is as close as you're describing.
That might be part of it, but there were times that I was able to hold the repeater, but I just wasn't getting any audio through. I was told "You're holding the repeater open, I just don't hear you saying anything."
I spoke with the salesman at AES that I purchased it from. I'll be taking it in on Saturday to swap it for another unit. It's supposed to be a nice day for a motorcycle ride anyway.
Hopefully the new one will work fine. I've NEVER had problems with Yaesu in the past, and anybody can produce a defective unit.
I'll let you know how it goes.