Review on 📻 Black TYT TH-9800 Cross-Band Mobile Car Ham Radio - Quad Band, 50W by David Pirlet

A few years ago, two of my friends each bought a Yaesu FT 8900. I had the opportunity to observe and use the radio. I thought it was good, but of course the price is too high to justify the investment for me. Up until recently I have only ever used and required a 2m single band or a dual band VHF/UHF setup in a car and it has served my needs. 4 stripes? Who really uses or needs 4 tapes? I figured. In recent years I have been more active in amateur radio and more on the road. There were often UHF repeaters that were better suited to a particular situation, but I only had 2 meters. Or sometimes if I had dual band it would just be a 5 watt HT connected to a cellular antenna. It worked well, but I needed more power and less clutter than the speakers, microphones, power cords, and coax cables that run throughout the car. This was the last time I bought a brand new mobile phone since I received my ticket in 2001. Yes, I definitely had to buy a new mobile rig. I thought it might be the best phone I can afford. But $400+ for a Yaesu ATV? I still couldn't justify it. With a lot of chatter among the locals about new inexpensive Chinese rigs, I began to take notice. A year before the TYT-TH9800 was released, I learned that it was in the design phase. I decided to follow the progress and buy it if it turns out to be worth it. So was it worth it? Well, it turns out my job now sends me traveling up to 300 miles or more a day. Remote wilderness areas of northern Pennsylvania. No cell dead zones. HT had to go and I replaced it with TH9800. Now I wonder how I used to get by with less. Combined with Radio Shack's tri-band scanning antenna, this setup was pure mobile business bliss. It is powerful, reliable and easy to use. Hypermemory (AF buttons) is particularly useful. When traveling across the state, I can set and then recall a preset configuration for the radio that matches the repeaters I use in that area. No need to scroll through hundreds of reminders. I use double recording all the time. If I start fading at one repeater, I can scan or seek another on the other side of the rig with a silky smooth transition. I particularly like the fact that this radio allows CB reception, unlike the Yaesu version. So I can have CB channel 19 on the left and 2 meters on the right. I only turn off CH19 for important things and keep chewing on my repeater rag as I put the interstate miles behind me. Radio. All 800 memory slots on this radio are filled by ordering a USB programming cable. Yes, it CAN be done in CHIRP, unlike most things you read online. CHIRP can't upload and download to the radio yet, but that's not a problem. You simply use the TYT software to grab the .dat file and open it in CHIRP. You can then use any available CHIRP options to download your frequencies and import them into a .dat file. Use TYT to download the .dat. Did! I loaded each repeater into the radio at 10/6/2/70 with wide margins. I don't think it's any better than this radio other than having a mobile all-band/all mode. Especially at this price! * My version is Plus updated. According to the TYT representative who replied to me, this version (excellent customer service) fixes several bugs in the firmware and improves the cross-repeat function.