Devil's Advocate
I purchased a VX-8DR a couple weeks ago. More product reviews are better than less so I hope you don’t mind me adding mine here. I’ve only read the first 20 pages of this thread so I apologize if some items mentioned here have been covered already.
My strategy when choosing this transceiver was to purchase a major manufacturer’s top end model that had the functionality I required for my application. I ended up purchasing the Yaesu VX-8DR. I’m not particularly happy with my purchase. The VX-8DR has some saving graces (chiefly its abundance of capabilities) which have saved it from the Kijiji listings. Overall I truly believe that the developers could have made this radio something to behold but there is strong evidence it was rushed to the production line instead. There are many things (good and bad) that you might want to know about this radio before deciding to purchase it. I’ll start with the bad.
Hardware:
First thing out of the box the radio had an electrical problem. A bad connection causes the speaker volume to change considerably when the radio is tilted at different angles or if the speaker grill is pressed gently.
The antenna deforms very easily. Handheld rubberized antenna design is an old, well hashed out art so I’m confused as to why my well taken care of radio had permanent kinks in the antenna after just two days.
The finish started wearing off of the VFO select buttons after only a few hours of use.
The wall adapter supplied with the radio is too small to power it when it’s transmitting so if the PTT button is pressed when the radio is plugged in it shuts off completely. Plan on upgrading to a proper power supply, if you don’t want to be running off batteries, all of the time. The power connector is a standard coaxial type but very tiny. You may have to look around a bit for one of these or order it directly from Yaesu.
Another annoyance is that when you connect or disconnect the wall adapter from the radio it does not transfer to and from the battery power seamlessly so the radio will shut off. If you have changed settings and not powered off the radio properly before this happens those settings will be lost. I find this particularly frustrating because I like to have the radio running on my desk then unplugging it and taking it with me when I head out the door.
There is no USB interface on this radio for backing up and organizing the thousand plus frequencies and dozens of settings. Its difficult to find a consumer electronic device these days that doesn’t have a USB interface, particularly a device with onboard memory, but Yaesu is still in the dark ages here so I have to instead order an accessory from a third party who has hacked the radio, to provide (partially anyway) what everybody would obviously be asking for.
The Bluetooth headset listed for the VX-8DR is so ridiculously bulky and retro looking that I wouldn’t be seen dead with it. It reminds me of those 1980s Realistic 49Mhz headsets that only worked for 100 feet. It’s not specified whether or not the VX-8DR uses the actual Bluetooth standard. I’m hoping it does because I can pick up a decent aftermarket earpiece for $25.00. Why does one of the top equipment manufactures have to apply such a geek factor to their new products? There are a lot of fun activities that are around to compete with amateur radio these days and they certainly have their share of shiny toys such as I-pods, PlayStations etc.
The button interface for this unit is atrocious by today’s standards. There are 26 controls sprawled out around the radio; each has a gazillion functions and because they are so small the abbreviations on them mean almost nothing. The PTT area on the side of the radio has four different buttons, including VOLUME, MONITOR, FUNCTION and PTT. The convoluted methods used to adjust functions on this radio make remembering how to operate it difficult enough, but having to remember what all the buttons do and where they are located compounds the problem. This is a major beef of mine. Why does this radio have the look and feel of something out of the mid-80s with a partially fixed, low resolution dot matrix display? Color graphical touch screens are a dime a dozen these days and have been used for years now in small consumer products such as cell phones, cameras, as well as GPS units, and for good reason. In fact they are hobby level devices and I have been using them in projects for some time now. The buttons and display on the VX-8DR take up 3/4 of the front panel; these could be replaced by a large touch screen, easily navigated, dynamic menus and large, well labeled, virtual buttons. When the buttons are not being used large frequency readings, status displays, and graphs could take their place. With a touch display, firmware updates could instantly solve ergonomics issues. For a device this complex and loaded with functions a touch screen is the only logical choice. If you haven’t had the opportunity to try out an Apple I-Touch I highly recommend going down to the local consumer electronics store and playing with one. You’ll instantly fall in love with the user interface. I turned my VX-8DR on in the vehicle the other night and my friend thought I was using one of the original flip cell phones. Again, what’s with the geek factor?
Firmware:
The radio’s main issues lay in firmware (glitches, inconsistencies, lack of flexibility concerning basic functions, difficulty navigating controls etc.)
The clock occasionally changes time and then returns to the correct time. Maybe this is part of an actual function that I occasionally activate but alas the vapor thin user manual provides no hint of this.
When the battery is charged and the power is off the radio may display “EXTERNAL DC” or “CHARGE COMPLETE” or “NO BATTERY”.
The “SCAN LAMP” function, a feature that turns on the display illumination when an active channel is found is not reliable.
The control dial cannot be set as a volume control. This means that you have to find and press the volume function button which is poorly labeled and hidden amongst the other PTT button functions on the side of the radio, with one hand. Then with the other hand, rotate the control dial. ??????!!!!!! It is almost impossible to change the volume if the radio is stored in a pocket or on a belt clip or anywhere else beside in your hand. This is a portable radio so it follows that it will be operated in continuously changing noise environments. There is a reason that most portables have a large easily accessible volume knob and it hurts my brain to consider what happened here. This reminds me of a beer bottle I found on an archeological dig one time. It had a rounded bottom, designed so that bar patrons could not set their drinks down lest the beer spill out. This way the drink was always in hand and was consumed more rapidly. Perhaps Yaesu believes that if we always have the radios in our hands in order to operate them it will look like we’re having so much fun, we just can’t put the darn things down. I have partially solved this problem by using earphones with a built in volume control. Actually I have cut and soldered together pieces of three earphones so that I have the earbuds I want attached to a volume control which is attached to a straight in stereo plug (a 90 degree plug won’t fit because of the waterproof flange on the radios audio jack).
The squelch is extremely weak and the s-meter pins high with signals so week that they are completely unintelligible. I do a lot of direction finding but it’s pretty much a lost cause with this radio. The squelch cannot be adjusted high enough to cut out even the weakest of signals and the radio is always sputtering from one distant signal or another. It’s so distracting and embarrassing when I’m in the car with other passengers I usually just shut it off. For direction finding I’m now designing an adjustable, external attenuator. Great! One more thing to lug around.
One of the most commonly used buttons, the main menu button which allows you to access the 111 setup functions (some of them primary adjustments such as squelch) is tasked instead to the GPS functions. So it’s labeled as “MENU” but when you press it, it takes you to the GPS display and APRS pages. In order to access the menu you have to hold it down for a couple of seconds. If you don’t (try and do this three times without forgetting to) then you end up having to page through several GPS/APRS pages to get back to where you can access the menu again, EVEN IF YOU DON’T HAVE A GPS CONNECTED. I’m certain that Yaesu did this just so you would be reminded five times a day that you own a real GPS unit instead of the mostly useless module that they want you to buy for this radio.
The function settings require a plethora of methods to edit and save settings etc. For instance saving a setting may require pressing the PTT, FW, V/M, the Internet button or maybe others that I’ve forgotten at this point. This makes remembering how to run even the most common features of the radio extremely difficult to do. It’s ridiculous and unnecessary.
The CW learning/training function seems to be taking up space better used for something else. Here we have someone owning a top end transceiver but they don’t know CW yet? Besides this, there are loads of free CW training tools on the Internet. Perhaps the space could have been better assigned to an on board user guide for the radio. After all, what good is knowing CW if you can’t figure out how to get it running? This brings up the other Swiss army features on the radio such as the barometer and flashlight. I find myself asking where is the jackknife, compass, fishhooks, emergency blanket, fire starter, signal mirror, etc. The flashlight function by the way is buried somewhere within the other 111 menu functions. Handy…
The main menu with its 111 items is very poorly labeled. There is no consistency in the item names which makes finding settings time consuming. This could have been very easily avoided. For example Yaesu decided to use the following:
(46) LAMP is the control setting for the display’s illumination on duration.
(49) LCD DIMMER is the control setting for the display illumination brightness.
(50) LED LIGHT is the flashlight on/off control.
(81) SCAN LIGHT is the control setting that determines if the display illumination turns on if an active channel is found during search or scan.
I thought they were using inconsistent names in order to keep related items close together alphabetically but that doesn’t explain “SCAN LIGHT”.
Oh yeah, and despite all of the different internet function settings there is actually one menu item listed simply as “INTERNET”. Internet what? Internet diaper changing function? That one is nothing short of comical.
The spectrum analyzer function has no gain control. More often than not the background noise has the graph pinned high across the entire band making the analyzer useless.
The RX attenuation function can only be turned on or off, not adjustable. It is global. It cannot be activated/deactivated for individual memories (which is a minor disappointment). About ten years ago I bought a Realistic scanner that had this capability and it was very handy for cutting out interference on particularly noisy channels without compromising the RX sensitivity of the other channels.
Something in the firmware causes the RX sensitivity to change when switching back and forth between functions.
Other Issues
The RX sensitivity, particularly in the shortwave bands is very poor. With a 34 foot horizontal dipole I’m lucky to pick up two intelligible stations when skip peaks for the day. In contrast my $27.00 Grundig FR-200 AM/FM/SW crank radio with its built in 24 inch telescoping antenna receives over a dozen SW stations.
The RX sensitivity is reduced noticeably when the radio is plugged into the wall adapter. I understand how attaching the radio to a power supply can affect the antenna dynamics and I know that it can be a difficult thing for the designers to control but it’s still annoying and so I’m mentioning it.
The radio will not run on rechargeable batteries when using the AA cell battery case. This is extremely disappointing.
User manual:
The manual is extremely anorexic. It has a table of contents but no index. The paper version of course has no search function so if you are trying to find details on a specific topic you’ll instead find yourself spending a frustratingly large portion of time thumbing through the manual page by page. Another item the manual lacks is a glossary and its author’s enthusiasm for proprietary acronyms compounds the problem. The manual seems to leave out important details as well. For instance, the radio is apparently submersible but it does not tell you if the antenna has to be screwed on in order for this to be true or not. Inspecting the antenna connector leaves it to question. This is an important issue for me since I spend most of my free time tromping around in the bush with my radio stowed. The antenna is off so it fits in my pocket and also to reduce flexing stress on the radio’s antenna connector. Of course, despite its thin profile Yaesu seemed to find the budget to fit, into the front of the manual, a description of all the accessories you could spend money on.
Things I like about this radio:
It’s small
It’s submersible (at least under some conditions)
I can scan specific frequencies with one VFO while listening to another frequency on the other VFO. This way I never miss important chatter (do to priority channel scan delay) on the most important frequency.
I can listen to each VFO in each ear or both VFOs in both ears. This is very helpful for sorting out priority chatter.
I can set the radio to automatically turn the volume down, or off, on one VFO when the other VFO detects an active channel. Again, this important for sorting out priority chatter.
So there you have it. Over four pages of what I don’t like about this radio and a quarter page of what I do.
. On my DR I have it set VOX
