A friend of mine who owns Yaesus, says that while they are good 
rigs, he feels that Yaesu cuts corners on the components they use 
in their rigs.  I also like the size of the 897 and that it 
covers the 440 band but the lack of speech and the way they do 
their menus really make the rigs unusable for blind guys.  Jim 
WA6EKS

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Butch Bussen <[log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Date sent: Sat, 11 Jul 2015 07:34:42 -0700
Subject: Re: Forget Yaesu and just go Kenwood

Absolutely, I've run kenwoods for years because of this and 
they're also
good radios.  The 480 is a good radio as is the 590 if your 
budjet can
handle it.  The 590 is one of the best bang for the buck radios 
out
there today.
73
Butch
WA0VJR
Node 3148
Wallace, ks.


On Fri, 10 Jul 2015, Matthew Chao wrote:

 Absolutely agree.  I have a Kenwood TS480SAT and a TMV71A.  Both 
are
 great rigs, and they speak most functions that weren't spoken on 
many
 base/mobile rigs only a few years ago.  In short, take the 
guesswork
 out of what your rig's doing and buy an accessible Kenwood 
product.
 --Matt, N1IBB.

 At 06:13 PM 7/10/2015 -0700, you wrote:
 Simply put, forget Yaesu and go for a Kenwood! The VGS1 for an
 additional $50 or $60, plugged into the circuitboard will speak
 all kind of functions.  Jim WA6EKS

  ----- Original Message -----
 From: Michael Ryan <[log in to unmask]
 To: [log in to unmask]
 Date sent: Fri, 10 Jul 2015 22:31:20 -0230
 Subject: Re Yaesu FT-897D

 Scott:

 Although a greate and flexable radio, there is no speech and you
 can't add
 it physically via internal board etc.
 You would only get speech through a PC running either ham radio
 delux or
 any other loging program that would proagat the frequency, band
 and mode
 fields etc.
 Also, this radio has a group of buttons which bring up a list of
 items then
 you use the select knob to adjust things.  Very complex.
 The only Yaesu rig that has speech to my knowledge is the 
FT-450D
 and Yaesu
 doesn't plan on adding speech to anything else any time soon.
 So you could either spring for that 1, a Yaesu rig that has lots
 of buttons
 like the FT-950 and up or look for an excellent condition FT-847
 which did
 have speech back in the day.

 73:
 Mike DE VO1AX


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