After 15 years of sitting on my shack bench I have officially retired my FT-950. I'm going to miss the old beast, it never let me down, and it has done well over 21,000 SSB & CW QSO's since I bought it new.
I started to realize that the new rigs had much better roofing filters....and just about everything else. So it was time for it to go to another home. In its place will be a much smaller FT-891. It's all I really need in the shack as 90% of my operating is POTA, lighthouse, or island activations, and this means a huge rig wasn't really needed. The plus side is I now have much more room on the bench for more junk!!
My thoughts so far on the FT-891? What a royal pain in the 'backside' the menu system is, and the manual that comes with the radio is just about useless. I've always used Yaesu or Elecraft......this may be my last Yaesu. I can't figure out why I must set the band settings for each individual band, instead of just doing it once, and allowing the on board computer to assign those setting to all bands.
I'll give it a while and try to really learn this rig....but I can't promise it'll be around for another 15 years!
Stay Safe Out There!
Some time ago I had the FT 857D and it was great in the car as I found the removable front was great for cars with less room. I can understand the frustration with the menu setup and that was the main reason I sold the radio.
ReplyDelete73,
Mike
VE9KK
Ah!! The venerable FT-857D, yep that was my first HF rig. I just loved that beast, but the menu system was just as bad as this new 891. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but its going to take a bit of time I guess.. 73, Bill VE3FI
DeleteI'm on my second 891. It is a very versatile radio. The main issue is the lack of real estate for buttons/knobs ergo the menu system. I found the band/mode change buttons very annoying and gravitated to using memories to switch bands and modes. To do I used RT Systems software which was a real dream to work with.
ReplyDeleteI also found that when working in the home shack, FLRig was a very nice program to use to control the various radio functions. That alone cut my need to access the function menu's to almost nothing.
Good luck on your 891 journey. It took me a couple of months to begin to warm up to the radio.
I've had an 891 for about 3 years now and I'm actually very pleased with it. Yes the menu system is complex but it also gives the user a lot of control over every detail. What I love best are all the filter options. Even on a noisy band I can still get a full quieting signal. Stick with it and soon the menus will become intuitive. When a radio has so many user configurable options in a very compact package (at a very reasonable price) menus are essential.
ReplyDeleteJohn VA3KOT