New VHF/UHF rig for the car.

About a week ago, I went to my car to participate in the Northern New Jersey ARES Net. The repeater that the net is held on is in Morristown, NJ. Not that far away; but not reachable with a hand held from my house. I went to the car to use the mobile rig, as it has more "oomph". It was then that I noticed my QYT 8900 mobile VHF/UHF radio was not transmitting. When I would key the microphone, the display would show full output, but I was not making it into the repeater. ANY repeater. I tried just about everything that was in memory - nothing.

That's definitely not good. As the EC for South Plainfield and as a member of the Middlesex County ARES Team, I can't afford to be without VHF/UHF capability in my vehicle.

I also have a son in college and am paying a hefty tuition bill, so I can't afford a new rig, either.

I went to Amazon to see what I could get for under $100 as that's all I was able to scrape together right now - the fact that Christmas is next week wasn't helping, either.

I "settled" on another QYT product - this time the KT-8900D:

Yes, indeedy a Kenwood / Yaesu / Icom product would have been much preferred. At this time, I cannot afford that - and the QYT 8900, while it lasted, provided me with a couple years of good service. The quality of received audio was very good to excellent; and no one ever complained about my signal other than the normal "being out of range" type of comments that you'd get with any mobile VHF/UHF transceiver.

It arrived last Friday and I began to program it last weekend. Manual programming as the programming cable that comes with the radio seems to be a piece of junk. Using the QYT software or CHIRP, I get the "Cannot Clone Radio" error with both Windows 10 or XP. Manual programming isn't difficult at all, it just takes more time - and I cannot change the splash displays manually, either.

It would be neat to change that "KT-8900D" display to "W2LJ" - but such is life. At least I have emergency capability back up and running should the need arise (God forbid!)

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!