The Icom ID-52 seems to be a very nice HT, with an insanely impenetrable user experience. I made the mistake of reading the manual and now I somehow understand even less.
@dcreemer It's getting worse and worse it seems. Back in the 90's I used Standard handhelds, dual band with cross band repeat. Lots of features. Never had trouble programming it without a manual.
My FT-60, I can mostly do without a manual but I have to fumble a lot and occasionally have to look it up.
And Baofengs? Nightmare.
The FT-450D is not easy to use. I realize that Yaesu is cramming a lot of function onto a small panel with not enough buttons and which has to simultaneously address voice and CW operation. Maybe this is an unsolvable problem.
When operating CW you need certain functions easily accessible. When operating phone you need a different set. When contesting a different set. A DXpeditioner needs a different set. Trying to address all of those with one small fixed panel and a few buttons results in a nightmare.
And of course I disagree with their choices. How often do you need to adjust the antenna attenuator and RF amp chain? For me it's never, but it gets a whole button to itself.
How often do I change the AGC? Never. But it gets a button.
Among the small number of buttons on the panel, there are a half dozen that I have never touched since I bought the radio, on CW, phone, or digital. That seems wrong.
Do I need a thousand memories? Actually, I don't need any. A good part of the manual is devoted to the fancy memories, banks of memories, special memories, how to use them, etc. I have zero use for memories.
Redesign the panel and add a numpad for entering frequencies. That's something I'd use a lot. It doesn't have one.
@shuttersparks I actually understand the Baofeng interface better - maybe because it’s not trying to do so much. Once you add in d-star or c4fm or whatever plus all the other features I think they gave up trying to build a comprehensible UI.
Anyway… back to trying to convince my microwave oven it doesn’t need to connect to wifi…
@dcreemer Hah, yeah, I'm old school. No smart or connected devices in this household. Better to buy appliances that are 20 or 25 years old and maintain them yourself. You can get good deals on appliances at thrift stores. No need for a $2000 refrigerator that breaks in three years. Get one for $50 and keep it going with parts you can buy on Amazon for cheap.
