15 Dec 2019

FT817, FT817ND and FT818

When the FT818 appeared I was disappointed. The FT817 has been popular for many years and the FT817ND and FT818 seem to have built on that reputation.

In truth the FT818 just got rid of difficult to source parts and offered customers little new. Had they added a few extras they would have sold thousands. It would appear ICOM's IC-705 will do this instead. In my view, Yaesu has lost its focus and could leave the amateur market. ICOM seems more likely to survive.

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/hf/ft817
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1 comment:

  1. Todd Dugdale Sun Dec 15, 02:25:00 pm GMT

    There's significant competition for Yaesu now, with several nice HF QRP rigs available. The CommRadio CTX-10 and Aerial-51 ALT-512 come to mind. Plus, various Chinese rigs are being sold on AliExpress for <$500. The lab599 TX-500 ($700) will also be another option soon.

    While QRP ops seem to be a niche market (within a niche), so is the market for $4k HF base stations -- which seems to be the route Yaesu is currently taking. And anything VHF/UHF has moved into their System Fusion design, requiring specialised repeaters.

    I had hoped Yaesu would have come out with a 2M/70cm *only* SSB rig suitable for satcom. Instead, ICOM did that... for $1500! And it's a base station, not a portable rig. So I'm also looking forward to the IC-705, though for different reasons.

    Still, I'd expect the IC-705 to cost well over $1k.

    - KD0TLS

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