Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

A few years ago 2 friends of mine each bought a Yaesu FT 8900. I had the opportunity to observe and also use the radio. I thought it was nice, but certainly priced too high to be worth the investment for me. Up until recently I had only ever used and needed a single band 2 meter or dual band VHF/UHF rig in the vehicle and that met my needs. 4 bands? Who really uses or needs 4 bands? I Thought to myself. In recent years I've been both more active on the ham radio and doing more on the road. Often times there were UHF repeaters that would lend themselves better to a particular situation but I only had 2 meters available. Or sometimes If I had dual band it was just a 5 watt HT hooked to a mobile antenna. It performed well but I needed more power and less clutter than having speakers, microphones, power cables and coax strung all over the car. It had been since I got my ticket in 2001 I last purchased a brand new mobile radio. Yes, I was definitely due for new mobile rig. I figured it may as well be the best mobile I can afford. But $400+ for a Yaesu quad bander? Still no way I could justify it. With lots of chatter amongst the locals about the new budget priced Chinese rigs I began to pay attention. A year before the TYT-TH9800 was even produced I found out it was in the design stages. I made a point to follow the progress and buy one if it turned out to be worthwhile. So was it worthwhile? Well, turns out my job is now sending me on road trips as much as 300 miles or more a day. Remote wilderness areas of upstate PA. No cell service dead zones. The HT had to go and I replaced it with the TH9800. Now I wonder how I ever got by on anything less. Paired with a tri-band Radio Shack "scanner" antenna this rig has been pure mobile operating bliss. Its powerful, reliable, and easy to operate.The hyper memories (A-F keys) are especially useful. As I travel to different regions of the state I can set and later recall a preset configuration for the radio to match the repeaters I use in that region. No need to scroll through hundreds of memories. I find myself using the dual receive all the time. As I'm beginning to fade on one repeater I can scan or look for another on the other side of the rig with a smooth as silk transition. I especially like that this radio, unlike the Yaesu version allows reception of CB. So I can have CB channel 19 on the left and 2 meters on the right. I squelch ch19 for only the important stuff and carry on my repeater rag chew as I put the interstate miles behind me. Audio reports have been fabulous, with quite a few saying "Where can I get one" in response to hearing the offerings of this radio. All 800 memories of this radio are full, thanks to ordering the USB Programming cable. Yes, it CAN be done in CHIRP, contrary to most of what you read on the web. CHIRP cannot upload and download to the radio yet but that's no big deal. You simply use the TYT software to capture a .dat file and open that in CHIRP. Then you can use all the neat options in CHIRP to download your frequencies and import them into the .dat file. Use the TYT to upload the .dat. Done! I have every 10/6/2/70 repeater in the state loaded into the radio with plenty of extra room. Outside of having a mobile all band/all mode I dont think it gets any better than this radio. Especially for this price!! *My version is the "Plus Upgraded" version. This version, according to the TYT representative that wrote me back,(great customer service) fixes several bugs in the firmware and makes the crossband repeat feature work better.