Amateur radio manufacturer Yaesu seems to have followed up their popular VX-7R transceiver with the Yaesu VX-8R. I admit I don’t follow the ham radio market that closely these days, so just like the 5D Mark II, I noticed this after seeing someone else make a passing reference to it. It’s actually not even mentioned on the Yaesu site yet, hence the link to Universal Radio, a two-way dealer.

It covers the 6 Meter (50-54 MHz), 2 Meter (144-148 MHz), and 70 centimeter (430-450 Mhz) ham bands at a full 5 Watts, and implements something that I’d speculated should be done a few years ago: it includes low power capacity on the 220 Meter (1.25 centimeter) ham band. 220 MHz is really underutilized, and, in my mind, endangered. (The FCC already took part of it away.) As long as radios are being made to operate on multiple bands, it never made sense to me to skip over one. A few other radios have been released that happen to include 220, which I hope will spark a little more interest in it.

Besides looking really weird and having a really stubby volume knob for no apparent reason, the VX-8R also seems to include options for Bluetooth and GPS. It’s not clear to me how the APRS works, whether simply plugging a GPS in will work. Another thing I’ve always thought would be neat, a spectrum scope, even if gimmicky, gets included, too: with a nice big LCD, you can set it up to scan a chunk of spectrum and plot it on the screen. The optional barometric sensor on its predecessor seems to have become standard on the VX-8R, though I always thought it was an odd thing to put in a radio. (How about a clock? And, ooh, get this: while you’re putting a clock in a radio with a wideband receiver, make it sync to WWVB. You can even use the pun “radio clock,” which is the correct term for what most people call an “atomic clock.” How about getting it certified for FRS, too? Or how about building in a better front-end, so that the 15 kW FM transmitter ten miles away doesn’t take up 10 MHz bandwidth? And what about D-Star?) Despite my criticisms, it looks to be a pretty slick radio, though the $410 price tag impairs my, “Wow, time for an upgrade” sensor in a much more serious way than a $310 price tag would.

Icom, the only one putting D-Star (a digital voice protocol) in ham radios right now, has also recently released the IC-92AD, an almost $600 handheld radio. They claim it’s mil-spec in durability, but with much smoother lines than the Yaesu radios. It covers only 2 meters and 440, not 6 meters or 220 MHz like some of its competition. It does include a digital voice recorder, though when $20 can buy 4GB of flash storage, I have to admit that its 30-second capacity seems a bit pathetic. I think its biggest problem, though, is that I don’t see any reason to buy it over its cheaper brother, the 91A(D).

Those frustrated with the fact that all the new radios seem unreasonably expensive (especially given the current economy) may enjoy Alinco’s new DJ-175T handheld, a no-frills 2 Meter handheld for under $100. (Though I should note that Icom seems to have beat them to the punch.)

Kenwood hasn’t announced anything new in a while, other than the discontinuation of the TH-D7AG, though I admit to never having paid much attention to their TH-F6A handheld. It appears notable for two things: the only radio with an option to use 0.05 Watts output (5 and 0.5W are the norm; I confess to being awfully curious about the range of 0.05 Watts), and the only multi-band radio to offer a full 5 Watts on the 220 MHz band. Oh, and possibly the only ham HT to offer SSB and CW receive (only) modes.

Okay, it turns out that Kenwood has introduced something new: the TM-D710A mobile radio, a $600 successor to its seemingly-popular D700 radio.

On the receiver front, a couple new radios seem to have been released. AOR has the AR-Mini, a small and seemingly budget wideband receiver. I admit to being a bit skeptical, because AOR has a reputation for making top-notch, very pricey receivers, so the introduction of a cheap receiver, and especially one that looks cheap (at least in the photo), risks undercutting that reputation. On the other hand, it could be a top-notch radio inside, and the high-end market might not be too lucrative right now.

Icom released the IC-RX7 receiver, which has got to be the slickest-looking receiver ever. In particular, I’m hoping that the screen and arrow buttons indicate that it has something I’ve long thought radios should have: a menu-driven system, instead of an obscure-key-combination-driven system.

It also looks like the Icom 7800 “Dream Rig”, with a five-figure price tag, has seen much of its niftiness trickle down to the 7700, which weighs in at a much more affordable $6,000 or so. (I should note that, in the process of researching this, I accidentally ended up with $16,000 worth of radios in my shopping basket at a competitor. I, for one, am glad that one-click shopping isn’t that commonly used.) For the rest of us, the IC-7200 is also new, taking the bizarre ruggedized look you might expect from a Yaesu, costing about $1100. (I confess to being confused, as the legendary IC-706 is actually less expensive; I can’t imagine a water-resistant front on a stationary is worth that much more money (and a big step up in bulk) to too many people.

All around, Icom seems to be most aggressive, by far, in introducing new features, while Yaesu’s VX-8R is the only radio I can see myself buying in the next couple years.