On 26/5/25 08:07, Stiv Ostenberg via Users wrote:
Agreed. I am not happy with Yaesu for that reason. To be honest, as I pointed out to a testy Yaesu rep, if their radio is so badly designed that a user level program can brick the radio, then their radio is garbage. Seriously, coming from an IT and Computer background, if your product is so fragile, nobody should trust it. Needless to say they continue to insist their radio is solid, but can be destroyed by software.
I still own Yaesu radios, and I will buy them if they suit me, just ignore their marketing claims, they are not trustworthy.
I'll admit I'm no real Yaesu fan… but consider this. Some of us still use 1200-baud AFSK APRS for messaging purposes.
Kenwood pulled out of the Australian market. They are not a supplier of amateur radio equipment any longer. They had by far the best implementation of APRS and AX.25 I've seen in a portable radio.
Icom support a similar feature, but it's tunnelled via DSTAR. Maybe technically superior, but useless for talking directly with the myriad of Kantronics KPC3s we have kicking around.
Alinco have a handheld with a GPS, with a feature that lets you copy and paste the current GPS location into a DMR text message. As useful as a sack of hammers.
A lot of the Chinese options, where I've seen it offered… - tunnel this over DMR, so same problem as the Icom offerings - or its transmit only
I went Yaesu FT-5DRs for my last hand-held purchase because over and above, they had the best offering for APRS still available here in Australia. (Really shitty compared to what Kenwood had, but better than anything I've seen from Icom/Alinco or the Chinese vendors in terms of compatibility.)
I'm not *against* using messaging over DMR/DSTAR, but if it's not backward compatible with what's out there now (i.e. the radio can be switched into a Bell-203 AX.25 mode), it's useless to me… might as well strap a TNC to a Baofeng.
If I've misread the Chinglish marketing blurbs and overlooked a Bell-203 compatible AX.25 TNC available in the competitors, I'm all ears.
In the meantime, I'll roll the dice using Chirp with Yaesu radios, as I don't have a viable alternative.