This is quite an old video and to be fair, I think the price has dropped since this was filmed. Having said that, the market does seem to be flooded with 2m/70cm FM radios & I often hear people complaining how quiet the repeaters & simplex channels are. 2m/70cm is fairly dead in my area. If I leave a radio on the 2m calling channel I might hear one call per day. I've never heard anyone calling CQ on the 70cms calling channel. I hear a few QSO's hear & there on repeaters, but not enough to make me want to buy/install a dedicated radio for it.....not sure if that's the same for the rest of the country. So I am left wondering how much demand there really is? The fact that Yaesu is still selling this radio a couple of years after I made this video suggests that maybe I was wrong & there is a market for it? Either way, I won't be wasting my money on buying one!

Thanks Ben. That trip was awesome fun.

It took me a long time to save up enough to buy that! Worked hard, put in the overtime, put aside whatever I could into the savings account each month & roughly 5 years later I get to enjoy the reward.

@@AmateurRadioUK Unfortunately I have the low end stuff. Good on you for saving up the dough. Excellent radios!

@eriphoor Yeah, the Flex is really nice. I try not to rub it in other people's faces (I hope it doesn't come across that way). I consider myself lucky to have a little disposable income. I realise that a lot of people aren't so lucky. I guess it depends how people choose to spend their disposable income (however much or little that might be). Some have a nice house, some have an expensive car, some people plough all of their money into their annual holiday, some spend it on other hobbies or social activities. I don't have kids, which certainly helps! I don't have a particularly big house (I live in a mid-terrace on a housing estate). I haven't been away on holiday for around 5-6 years. I don't drive a luxury car and I might have a special night out in a restaurant or theatre with my partner maybe once a month. Radio is my escape/relaxation time, so I put virtually all of my disposable income into radio. Each to their own I guess.

@@AmateurRadioUK No Mate, not at all. If there is something in this world that you are passionate about, money is just a sideline to reach your goals. Cheers. P.S. I enjoy the channel as well.

I added a little Mike gain and it seemed to clear the audio up quite a bit.

The problem for me is the price. If it was £400-£500 would be praising Xiegu for making a great budget radio. At that price I could forgive its imperfections. At £800 we shouldn't be seeing these flaws.

@@AmateurRadioUK i wholeheartedly agree.

Thanks Brian.

That pretty much sums it up! As for an honest review, the bottom line is that I'm a small channel with no sponsors to upset! Everything on the channel is paid for out of my own pocket, meaning that I can pretty much say what I want (within reason) & not worry about what my sponsors will think!

I think my first choice would be the FX-4CR, which is a great little radio.

Yep. I think that pretty much sums it up. Does the X6100 have the FT8 decode capability? I don't think it does but im not sure. The only thing that I can think of that the X6200 does over the X6100 is decode FT8, CW & RTTY (I think). Unfortunately it doesn't transmit FT8 (unless you hook it up to a computer). Might also work over Bluetooth with the app on the phone......I've yet to try that.

@@AmateurRadioUK good question on the X6100 FT8, but I’m sure someone has/can develop a firmware to do it.

Yep. A few little bugs that need sorting (typical Xiegu) and an excessive price tag.

You're right. It is overpriced. I think the problem Xiegu have is that the X6200 is basically an X6100 with a bit of a face-lift. If they sold the X6200 at a sensible price it would kill off X6100 sales.

Love the 705.....great radio.

I don't see myself buying anything else from them if I'm totally honest.

I can't say I've noticed the inner & outer knobs sticking together. I very occasionally notice that I have to go two clicks on the multi function knob to move one position in the menu on the screen. Again, fine on a budget radio but this is priced more towards the mid-range of the radio market.

Precisely. As I've said to others, I would forgive its shortcomings if it was priced as a budget radio. At £800, you're getting towards what I would consider "mid-range" in the radio market, so I would expect better.

Not played with the G90 but that's probably a fair conclusion. As I think I think i said in the video......the FX-4CR costs around £500-£550. Slightly more than a G90 but significantly smaller & lighter for portable (SOTA/POTA/hiking) ops. That would probably be my first choice if I had to choose a radio for that application.

Not played with a G90 but heard some good things about it. The X6200 is around the same price as the FT-891 & FT-710 (after factoring in Yaesu's cashback scheme) but I don't think it's quite in the same league. I would forgive its shortcomings if it was a budget radio at around £500 or so but at £800 I would expect better. The bottom line is I think the X6200 is overpriced.

It certainly gets warm. I had it plugged in and turned on for most of the day before filming this while I messed around with it. Admittedly that was mainly on RX. I didn't do a lot of transmitting. I took it out on a POTA yesterday. About 1 hour in direct sunlight with a much heavier TX cycle & it did get hot, although it didn't overheat. It will be interesting to see how it copes with FT8.

I took it out to a POTA activation yesterday and I am slowly warming to it. The fact that it's slightly off frequency on 6m is a big concern. Apart from that it's fine. As you heard, the transmit audio isn't fantastic, but it's OK for a budget radio. The thing is this costs £800, which is a lot for a budget radio. I just feel it's overpriced for what it is.

To me, the receiver audio is not so good. For a QRP Radio, I would think the transmit audio would have more of a DX sound to it

@@AmateurRadioUK The off frequency issue should be a easy fix for them. As for that muffled audio that is big annoyance, again maybe that can be tailored in settings or a future firmware update.

Not having played with the X6100, I'm not completely sure! Looking at the features on the website, there doesn't seem to be a lot of difference apart from a slight face lift & the price!

@@AmateurRadioUK yep that’s what I can only surmise too.

You won't have to wait long. I anticipate releasing that video either later this evening or sometime tomorrow. It's already been filmed & is in the final stages of editing/uploading!

@@AmateurRadioUK Great. Was this at Fyfield Down? On my todo list to activate with The Ridgeway. I heard you on 40m at my home, but I don't have 40m antenna.

Yep, that was the one!

I'm a bit on the fence with that one to be honest. If it was priced around the £500-£600 region I would probably agree with you. This currently sells for £800, which puts you in the same price bracket as a Yaesu FT-891 & The FT-710 (the 710 is currently £815 if you take into account Yaesu's cashback scheme). I know they're 100 watt radios & not quite comparable but ignoring the form factor I don't feel like they are (or should be) in the same price bracket. I just don't think the performance justifies that price bracket. The FX-4CR which I featured on the channel a while back has similar performance & can be purchased for around £500.....which is the price bracket that I feel this radio should slot into. Unfortunately that would kill sales of the X6100, which is why I think they had to up the price.

Thanks Duncan. Went on FT8 after ending the livestream. Got a total of 120 in the log so far.

Yep, when all is said & done it's basically a cross-band repeater. Anything going in on 2.4ghz gets spat back out on 10ghz. Would be nice to see another one launched to cover USA and/or Australia. I don't know how likely that is to happen but we live in hope!

Yeah, the noise level is very high here. Also 40m is a very busy band so you often get clobbered by adjacent stations setting up a little too close. With regards to distance vs power, I don't think power has that much to do with it. It was the wrong time of day for DX on 40m. What little DX there was would have been drowned out by the noise and QRM from adjacent stations. This time of year 40m basically becomes an NVIS band at that time of the evening. Really good for inter-g and EU up to around 1000 miles. Later into the evening 40m starts to go long. The EU stations become quieter and DX starts to creep in.......if I'd stayed on a bit longer I probably would have started to get DX.

I use a 22ah UltraMax battery for my 100 watt radios when portable. Possibly a bit overkill for a quick 30 minute activation with this radio, but it's what I had to hand at the time.

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Wow, I'd forgotten about this video. This is one of my very early videos when I first started KZbin.....a bit of a blast from the past! I did do a video testing how directional the MFJ loop is. That would have been released shortly after this video if you want to take a look. While not particularly scientific and probably flawed in my methodology, I think I came to the conclusion that a mag loop wasn't particularly directional. Several years down the line (with more experience) I would probably amend that to say that the loop isn't particularly directional unless you are in the nulls. The nulls are very deep, but only about 15 degrees wide on either side. In other words, you have around 30 degrees of deep attenuation but around 330 degrees where the gain doesn't change all that significantly. There will be a change in gain but not enough for it to be particularly noticeable......thus giving the impression of being fairly omnidirectional.

Thanks Motters. It seems a lot at first but once you get your head around what's actually happening it's not too bad.

Thanks

Yep. Much busier than expected. I won't complain though. It was a really good session & I had a lot of fun on this one.