Yaesu FT 2900R review

Rig continues to draw unsolicited compliments on its TX quality - mostly I'm using WideFM and always using the standard rather flimsy feeling mike. After using the rig in the car and at home I find it's now a pest that it lacks a detachable faceplate. The radio is a hefty lump to find a site for in my VW Golf estate. So I got a used FT7900 to try out with its separate faceplate - far smaller and lighter than the 2900. More expensive too, but the 2900's now likely to see use only at home - mostly on a variety of near and distant repeaters. Can still sometimes trip and use that 94-mile distant one in Fraserburgh (I'm in Fife, Scotland - go measure!) using a simple vertical resonant dipole when at its full height of not-quite 40ft up, on a fibreglass mast.

After around an hour of ragchew with the rig on its 30Watt setting this evening it was too hot for comfort really - so am wondering if replacing it with another set with a fan might be sensible - while this one is still 100% operational. We'll see. END of update notes.

My 2900E (Euro version) was bought just over a year ago and came with a 2 year Yaesu warranty. Somehow I don't see it as likely I'll need that warranty, but you never know...

This rig can be initially summed up with some pluses and minuses - here we go.

Buy. https://amzn.to/3eo1HSD

PLUSes
• Price - currently (early Nov, 2015) shown variously around £129.
• Ruggedly built - pretty much beyond argument.
• Simple to program, using only the rig's own controls. (don't put too much credence in reports saying it's hard - I can only conclude that anyone finding this hard might struggle to use speed-dial on a phone)
• Large, easily read display - Alpha tags too, very easy to read at a glance.
• Essential controls all on front panel - ie Vol/Squelch/VFO cum channel-dial.
• LOTS of memories available.
• Simplicity - except for function button labelling which is - strange.
• Memories groupable into Banks, can be separately scanned - this is just brilliant.
• RF Squelch - truly very useful indeed.
• Genuine 75watts - I've measured this as accurate - brings you out of the noise even with distant repeaters. I've regularly opened a repeater that's 94 miles from my house using a simple vertical dipole around 40ft high.
• It's a monobander - less complex than a dual bander, and virtually all contacts around here are 2m on stone age FM - hence this seen for me as a "plus"
• Many rig functions available on the standard DTFM mike - indeed some are only available on the mike's buttons.

MINUSes
• It's "only" a monobander. Potentially less useful than a Dual Band set. For others, this could be a plus - for me, that's so.
• No RF gain control - a universal complaint on FM sets these days!
• Segmented bar-graph S-meter. Every set has these now, but I don't have to like them - I'd prefer an S-number display added like my FT857d gives.
• Scan rate is strangely sluggish. My FT60e Handy-Talky beats the pants off it, easy.
• Set gets locked-up if a scan is still running, even if it's stopped on a memory the menu remains inaccessible till the scan is cancelled - this is stupid and it's irritating.
• Mine is Chinese-built. Unsure whether this may introduce quality issues later on - quite possibly a non existent matter, but can't get rid of the feeling somehow.
• Slightly less sensitive to weak signals than my FT60 when hooked to the same antenna system. Difference not too significant, but I'd have expected a single band set with its reduced coverage to have higher sensitivity than a dual bander. (My FT60 is an earlier Japanese manufactured unit - significant? Don't know.)
• Used value - not great on private sales - expect low trade in values too. Ebay sees these fetch around 50% of new price. Seems a little low to me - but makes for a great buy used, if you're sure it's not been beaten to death on a lousy antenna system that is.
• All VHF/UHF sets nowadays seem to use the horrible modular mike plug. I hate these things with a vengeance - it's so obviously a shift made to save pennies at manufacture regardless of these plugs being so obviously nasty in nature.
• Mine gets decidedly warm if used on high power for a while, I mean maybe up to an hour on approx. 50% duty cycle. So far this hasn't proved problematic, but I'd rather it stayed a bit cooler.
• It's cursed with the bloody useless Yaesu-Wires system that NOBODY uses, Yaesu really needs to listen to user feedback - this system is panned by virtually everybody with a Yaesu FM set - it should be written off as useless and the price dropped or else the freed up cost ploughed into other refinements.
• Sound comes from the rig's belly - opposite of most ham rigs. Means an ext. speaker is more necessary for some installations.

Some of these minuses are common with lots of radios, not peculiar to this one - they're evidence of trends in how manufacturers feel they can get away with reduced cost and rig functionality, or so it seems to me!

Overall, although there's a fair list of minuses I find I still like this radio lots, and use it regularly. I especially like - and use lots - the Banks system for grouping memories into sets that make sense to you - if scanning in one locality you set your memories into a "Bank" for that place and set the scan - only those memories are scanned. If needed, memories can appear in more than a single Bank. My FT60 also has this feature, which is quite enough to set it apart from all the Chinese HTs that lack the feature.

This rig's audio on both TX and RX is loud and clear - sounds just fine both ways.

I just do not understand how some users comment that it's hard to program this radio. Perhaps those guys also need help dressing in the morning and have to use Velcro tab shoes? Honestly, the auto-shift and tone access makes programming in extra repeaters a matter of minutes to enter an extra few. If 7 characters were available for the alpha tags I'd like that better, but find that I can make do with the 6 available here. You just have to use a bit of imagination when longer names have to be truncated.

It's a solid radio in almost every way - if some of the minuses were to be removed, it'd get very close to the ideal simple 2m FM radio. But as it is, it's still a keeper for sure.

Buy. https://amzn.to/3eo1HSD