Review on Yaesu Original FTM-300DR: 50W 📻 Dual-Band Digital Mobile Transceiver - C4FM/FM 144/430MHz by Larry Gaines

I have Fusion FTM-400XDR, FTM-100DR and now FTM-300DR Mobile Line; I'm on my second device, having traded it in for another due to issues I'll address later. 400 stays at home and is too good for mobile use. Touch screen and driving are not the best solution when you need to set up the radio. The hardware buttons are still tactile without looking. 100 were mobile but will now run WiRES-X full-time with the HRI-200, which 400 were doing part-time. The color screen is good but small like the FT3DR and not a touchscreen, which I'm glad about. no I'm not sure of their reasoning as big letters are always better for a quick look, with 400 being superior to others. I really wanted two VFOs and this solved the problem. You have C4FM capability on both VFOs like FT2DR and FT3DR but you cannot receive sound from both at the same time. None of them do. You can switch between VFOs and the active one will be heard, but not both at the same time. A disappointment in this price range, especially when the device is made in China. You can get simultaneous audio with analog-to-analog and analog-to-digital combinations. I want them to store individual VFO locations as merging doesn't allow me to use them the way I like to group them based on where I roam. The new group mode makes things a bit easier, but it's only one group. Why can't they have bands like HT for a while? Yaesu still doesn't have its own programming software, although I've never been a fan of it, but RT Systems finally released a version on June 19th! Thank you RT Systems! Now they install external firmware update switches and there are no more after-the-fact holes in the radios. It would be nice if there was menu driven software for updating the firmware as hopefully it's not going to be used often. The fan on this machine is loud, and I've never seen other models make that much noise when just scanning. You had to replace the control cable so you have to rip out whatever 400/100 barrels you had as they won't work. You only had to attach a camera/microphone to the main unit, which I feel is useless with such low resolution and slow RF transmission. That's why they obviously needed more wires. And the MLS-200 that worked for you at 400/100 doesn't work at 300. Pull him out too. The new mic doesn't have a lamp switch and there's no way to turn off those backlights that are annoying when driving at night. Why take away our ability to turn it on and off, Yaesu? I thought I read/heard somewhere that you could use a second VFO by using it as a WiRES-X node. You really can't, so it's a waste of a dual-band radio; 100 is the only one worth sacrificing for perpetual use, but is now being discontinued. I traded in my device because it got stuck when manually tuning the radio on the first day of ownership. The only way to reset the settings after trying several methods is to unplug the power cord. A few days later the radio jammed again while programming memory groups and eventually came back but lost all sound and wouldn't scan. Nothing fixed it to include factory reset or restoring from a micro SD card. Unplugging the power cord again solved this problem. Asked about it and no one had ever heard of these issues so I decided to trade in for another device and hope it doesn't suffer the same fate. It's in my car now that I have the software and copied all my frequencies. I don't think I'll have as many hands on it once the programming is over and I won't be as active as I was at the shack.