Get Ready For Spike In Radio Prices

[SteveShannon]

1 hour ago, Lscott said:

Looks like the Anytone radio, but with a slight change in the location of the buttons to the left of the display. I wouldn't be socked to find the firmware is from Anytone with a few tweaks.

https://www.bridgecomsystems.com/products/anytone-at-d578uviii-plus-tri-band-amateur-dmr-mobile-radio

It is the same as the Anytone, with slightly different features which are probably simply enabled in firmware. This Alinco, just like the Anytone, is a high powered mobile radio with terrific features such as cross band repeat, even digital to analog (cross-mode) repeat. It’s wrong to compare this to a $15 radio. It’s ignorant to call it “just a cheap Chinese throwaway radio.”

 

6 hours ago, tcp2525 said:

My point being is it's just a cheap Chinese throwaway radio

 

[tcp2525]

9 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

It is the same as the Anytone, with slightly different features which are probably simply enabled in firmware. This Alinco, just like the Anytone, is a high powered mobile radio with terrific features such as cross band repeat, even digital to analog (cross-mode) repeat. It’s wrong to compare this to a $15 radio. It’s ignorant to call it “just a cheap Chinese throwaway radio.”

 

 

To each their own. When one buys one of these knock-offs you have to consider support and does it have qualified repair facilities worldwide. Can you buy parts if you want to repair it yourself? My experience with the Chinese radios are they just exchange it for a new one and trash the defective one. On the surface that sounds great, but that's what you're dealing with. The big three have service centers and a parts department should you need them. Sorry, I refuse to pay premium prices for throwaway goods. That's just me.

[SteveShannon]

5 minutes ago, tcp2525 said:

To each their own. When one buys one of these knock-offs you have to consider support and does it have qualified repair facilities worldwide. Can you buy parts if you want to repair it yourself? My experience with the Chinese radios are they just exchange it for a new one and trash the defective one. On the surface that sounds great, but that's what you're dealing with. The big three have service centers and a parts department should you need them. Sorry, I refuse to pay premium prices for throwaway goods. That's just me.

Again with the racist and stereotypical dismissiveness.  A knockoff is an unauthorized copy of a “legitimate” product.  This radio and the handheld 878 have unique features all of their own that were groundbreaking when first released, such as having the memory needed to store every contact in the RadioID database. 

[WRYZ926]

And sometimes a simple fix will cost 2/3 the price of a new radio. Myself and others have ran into that when contacting Yaesu about blown USB ports of the FTDX10, FTDX101, and FTDX991. Yaesu wants to charge $900 to fix a bad USB port. And their fix is to replace the entire board. 

The chip is a standard run of the mill Silicon Labs USB chip.

Yaesu will only repair the blown USB chip one time under warranty and after that they will charge $900. To make it worse, they know it is a defect but won't fix it.

[tcp2525]

6 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

Again with the racist and stereotypical dismissiveness.  A knockoff is an unauthorized copy of a “legitimate” product.  This radio and the handheld 878 have unique features all of their own that were groundbreaking when first released, such as having the memory needed to store every contact in the RadioID database. 

Please don't start calling me a racist like you did last time as I'm not going to take the bait. Anyway, look at it this way,  I have a Kenwood V71a that the production run is about 20 years. And guess what? I can call Kenwood and buy parts for it. Try that with Anytone. That's not racist, it's common sense. 

[tcp2525]

20 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

And sometimes a simple fix will cost 2/3 the price of a new radio. Myself and others have ran into that when contacting Yaesu about blown USB ports of the FTDX10, FTDX101, and FTDX991. Yaesu wants to charge $900 to fix a bad USB port. And their fix is to replace the entire board. 

The chip is a standard run of the mill Silicon Labs USB chip.

Yaesu will only repair the blown USB chip one time under warranty and after that they will charge $900. To make it worse, they know it is a defect but won't fix it.

I'm not a Yaesu fan, but they're not going to fix that board on a component level. They will replace the board, common industry practice. If it's a reoccurring problem one can assume it might be outside influences blowing it. At least they repair it, whether or not you like the procedure or price. 

[Lscott]

2 minutes ago, tcp2525 said:

If it's a reoccurring problem one can assume it might be outside influences blowing it.

Or a known design defect they don't want to spend time or money on to fix it permanently.

[tcp2525]

1 minute ago, Lscott said:

Or a known design defect they don't want to spend time or money on to fix it permanently.

No doubt! I have zero respect for Yeasu and their incompetent service techs. Years back I had their quad bander, the 8900 or is it the 9800 that went back to them four times for a $0.03 chip resistor in the PA that was a known issue. I sold the radio for parts instead of having it fixed. I'll take an Anytone over a Yaesu any day of the week. 

[Lscott]

47 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

This radio and the handheld 878 have unique features all of their own that were groundbreaking when first released, such as having the memory needed to store every contact in the RadioID database. 

While that's a cool feature I'm not so sure its that big of a deal. The database is only as good as the info that goes into it. If it's garbage the data you see on the screen is useless. I'll wager there are plenty of entries with out of date addresses etc. Of course there is nothing that prevents someone from deliberately spoofing a DMR ID, so in that case what is the utility of displaying the extra info anyway? It would be wrong, just like the phone numbers you see with caller-ID when scammers are bugging you.

I have radios for NXDN and P25. None of those have a database loaded. You do have the option of showing the talkgroup number and the sending station's ID, but that's it.

[SteveShannon]

3 minutes ago, Lscott said:

While that's a cool feature I'm not so sure its that big of a deal. The database is only as good as the info that goes into it. If it's garbage the data you see on the screen is useless. I'll wager there are plenty of entries with out of date addresses etc. Of course there is nothing that prevents someone from deliberately spoofing a DMR ID, so in that case what is the utility of displaying the extra info anyway? It would be wrong, just like the phone numbers you see with caller-ID when scammers are bugging you.

I have radios for NXDN and P25. None of those have a database loaded. You do have the option of showing the talkgroup number and the sending station's ID, but that's it.

It’s true that a person can spoof another person’s DMR ID, but that’s probably not done frequently in amateur radio. The exact address isn’t important to me, but being able to see their country, call sign, and name is nice, just like having your logging software look up call signs automatically. 

[tcp2525]

21 minutes ago, Lscott said:

While that's a cool feature I'm not so sure its that big of a deal. The database is only as good as the info that goes into it. If it's garbage the data you see on the screen is useless. I'll wager there are plenty of entries with out of date addresses etc. Of course there is nothing that prevents someone from deliberately spoofing a DMR ID, so in that case what is the utility of displaying the extra info anyway? It would be wrong, just like the phone numbers you see with caller-ID when scammers are bugging you.

I have radios for NXDN and P25. None of those have a database loaded. You do have the option of showing the talkgroup number and the sending station's ID, but that's it.

Another neat feature of the 878 is it will do 220, albeit only 1/2 watt. Same chipset as the 578.

[WRYZ926]

53 minutes ago, tcp2525 said:

I'm not a Yaesu fan, but they're not going to fix that board on a component level. They will replace the board, common industry practice. If it's a reoccurring problem one can assume it might be outside influences blowing it. At least they repair it, whether or not you like the procedure or price. 

The rub is that they charge $900 to repair a $1300 radio (pre tariff price).

The bigger issue is that Yaesu knows it is a problem which is most likely caused by them during the manufacturing process. They solder a capacitor in place that is only used to program the USB controller. But Yaesu does not program the chips themselves, they use the factory programming from Silicon Labs. So there is no need for Yaesu to even put that capacitor on the board.

Several people that have had their radios repaired by Yaesu for the bad USB port was told directly by the Yaesu repair tech to not use the built in USB port. He told them to use an external sound card instead.

This is a common issue with the FTDX10, FTDX101 and FTDX991. I'm really surprised that we haven't started seeing the FT710 have the same issue.

[WRYZ926]

59 minutes ago, Lscott said:

Or a known design defect they don't want to spend time or money on to fix it permanently.

It is definitely a known design issue.

[tcp2525]

2 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

The rub is that they charge $900 to repair a $1300 radio (pre tariff price).

The bigger issue is that Yaesu knows it is a problem which is most likely caused by them during the manufacturing process. They solder a capacitor in place that is only used to program the USB controller. But Yaesu does not program the chips themselves, they use the factory programming from Silicon Labs. So there is no need for Yaesu to even put that capacitor on the board.

Several people that have had their radios repaired by Yaesu for the bad USB port was told directly by the Yaesu repair tech to not use the built in USB port. He told them to use an external sound card instead.

This is a common issue with the FTDX10, FTDX101 and FTDX991. I'm really surprised that we haven't started seeing the FT710 have the same issue.

Unfortunately that's what we have to deal with. I know Yaesu's HTs are garbage as most have poor recieve audio quality. At that price point I would expect more. That's why I opted to buy my 878s for $200 instead of $600 from the big three. At $200, I consider it a throwaway radio, which it is. Gotta admit Yeasu does build reliable HF rigs. They have yet to get the VHF/UHF sector working reliably. 

[SteveShannon]

29 minutes ago, tcp2525 said:

Unfortunately that's what we have to deal with. I know Yaesu's HTs are garbage as most have poor recieve audio quality. At that price point I would expect more. That's why I opted to buy my 878s for $200 instead of $600 from the big three. At $200, I consider it a throwaway radio, which it is. Gotta admit Yeasu does build reliable HF rigs. They have yet to get the VHF/UHF sector working reliably. 

I don’t understand. You called the Anytone 578 a $15 radio but you pay $200 for the 878?  The 578 plus is a 50 watt (vhf, 40 UHF, and 5 watts 1.25 meters) mobile version of the 878 but with cross-band repeater capability. 
I don’t know that it’s worth $485, but it’s certainly better than the majority of the inexpensive radios. 

[tcp2525]

2 minutes ago, SteveShannon said:

I don’t understand. You called the Anytone 578 a $15 radio but you pay $200 for the 878?  The 578 plus is a 50 watt (vhf, 40 UHF, and 5 watts 1.25 meters) mobile version of the 878 but with cross-band repeater capability. 
I don’t know that it’s worth $485, but it’s certainly better than the majority of the inexpensive radios. 

You're smart enough to understand economics. The 878 is a $14 radio, but some of us will pay what it's worth to the individual. I happen to feel that $200 for a disposable radio is a fair price. Would I pay $205 for it? He'll no, that exceeds fair market value for me. Would I pay $600 for a Yaesu FT5? Not on my life. The 878 far exceeds my performance expectations for a disposable radio. Simply put, a bargain. 

[Lscott]

2 hours ago, tcp2525 said:

Another neat feature of the 878 is it will do 220, albeit only 1/2 watt. Same chipset as the 578.

I would be careful about that. Go to the link below and look at the section for 220 band.

http://anytonetechzone.byethost7.com/878techmods.htm

[Lscott]

1 hour ago, tcp2525 said:

The 878 is a $14 radio,

I got close. I paid $35 for the original version of the radio with antenna, battery pack and charger base in like new condition last spring at a Ham swap.

[Lscott]

2 hours ago, SteveShannon said:

It’s true that a person can spoof another person’s DMR ID, but that’s probably not done frequently in amateur radio. The exact address isn’t important to me, but being able to see their country, call sign, and name is nice, just like having your logging software look up call signs automatically. 

Yeah, spoofing DMR ID's isn't that common, true. I miss programmed one of my NX-1300's setup for DMR. I got called out on that error when making a contact while out of town last summer. Oops.

I guess if that's what you find important then the feature is of value to you. Me, not so much. Just a difference of opinion.

[tcp2525]

38 minutes ago, Lscott said:

I would be careful about that. Go to the link below and look at the section for 220 band.

http://anytonetechzone.byethost7.com/878techmods.htm

I've been using for a long time to get into local repeaters without issue. Performance is much better with a whip cut for 220, s9 no worries about damaged PA.

[WRYZ926]

Some retailers have already increased the prices on Yaesu radios. Others still have the pre tariff prices listed. 

[WRUE951]

15 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

Some retailers have already increased the prices on Yaesu radios. Others still have the pre tariff prices listed. 

im noticing some pretty good hikes on 3D printers ad laser etchers..  I wanted the new AMS for my Bambu labs 3D printer.  A week ago i could have saved $125..   OH well, i keep using the version 1 that i have.  

[tcp2525]

30 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

Some retailers have already increased the prices on Yaesu radios. Others still have the pre tariff prices listed. 

Yep! And that's why I just bought bought a shiny new 2025 Honda Goldwing 50th Anniversary before the next batch comes in with the attached tariff. I'm in the process of removing my radio gear from the 2018 Goldwing and transferring it over. I wasn't ready for this, but I figured I better jump on it before it's too late. In a couple days I'll be GMRSing in style.

[WRYZ926]

I would love to purchase an Icom IC-9700 but that sure is not in the budget anytime soon.

I haven't even looked to see how the tariffs are effecting my other hobbies such as model railroading.

[tcp2525]

31 minutes ago, WRYZ926 said:

I would love to purchase an Icom IC-9700 but that sure is not in the budget anytime soon.

I haven't even looked to see how the tariffs are effecting my other hobbies such as model railroading.

Oh, I am so happy I bought my 9700 when it came out. Amazing radio. My stacked beams add to the fun.