Oct 24 2013

VGC VR-6600P Follow-up

I had a very pleasant contact with VGC about their new radio, and arrangements for a review sample are in the making. This will be a different kind of review: VGC actually wants me to check the radio out before they start selling it. This might imply that the initial results will be confidential, and not something I immediately can write about.

Here are a few teasers:

VR-6600-01

VR-6600-02

VR-6600-03

VR-6600-04

VR-6600-05

VR-6600-Specs

23 comments on “VGC VR-6600P Follow-up”

  2. This sounds interesting; as (proud) owner of a Yaesu FTM-350 it will be interesting to see what they come up with and if accessories like the Bluetooth and GPS modules are interchangeable for example.

    What’s I dislike about this is that we’re probably not able to read the results; but what I do like is the fact that they’ve asked you to extensively test the set before putting it on the market. Testing apparently gets important…

    73’s PG2P

    • Only the initial results might not be published, giving the manufacturer time to fix things if necessary. In the end a full review will be posted here, of course.

  6. You mentioned in the recent re-review of a rebadged Anytone AT5888UV that you believed it could be operated with your eyes closed, though I suspect you didn’t try to access its menus that way. To that end, I’d be interested to know, as you review, if the menus and their functions can be accessed numerically as is the case with many of the Chinese handhelds (see my eyes-free guides for Wouxun and Baofeng if you don’t know what I’m on about). I, for one, don’t insist on spoken feedback for successful eyes-free operation, bu it must be possible to always get the radio to a known default state from which to start. To facilitate this would be things like a beep marking the beginning or end of a menu, different pitched beeps for high/low power, default/not default settings, A/B band, etc. If you want to discuss further, I’m happy to do so. Also, I’m glad to see some movement on this, I think I saw them mention this radio, as well as several handhelds with full duplex dual receive, as early as 2011. Was beginning to think these might be vaporware.

  7. This is true, of course. In fact, I would suspect that most features that are useful to blind hams are only that way by accident. Which is fine. Of course, such things would be useful to drivers who should be watching where they’re aiming their cars instead of looking at their radios. Anyway, many of the changes I’d propose, such as the ones I mentioned previously, would be trivial to implement but would be of tremendous value, not just to us, but, again, to sighted people who should be watching where they’re going. Sure, I’d love all features to speak, including operating frequency, CTCSS/DCS, etc., but I know that isn’t a realistic expectation.

    • I talked to PA3BDD, a blind ham I know well, extensively about it. I actually wanted to interview him, but that never happened.

      It prompted me to write this in the conclusion of the Baofeng UV-82 review:

      “Improvements blind ham radio operators would love to see (hear!) aren’t there either. Menus still are announced in such a way that it is of no use to them. Go to the parameter menus for example and you won’t hear anything at all. How can they find out which CTCSS tone is displayed in the screeen? As far as they’re concerned, the voice prompt is pretty much useless.”

  8. True, the voice prompts could be more useful, as could the keypad beeps, but even so, the Baofeng UV5R is very usable by blind hams, as is the Wouun KG-UVD1P. My newest acquisition is the Puxing PX-UV973, which is also very usable, with slightly more spoken feedback, and, like the other two, all parameters can be directly set from the keypad. Please feel free to pass on the eyes-free guides for the UV5R and KG-UVD1P to your friend. I’ll be working one up for the puxing as well. BTW, pretty much forget about the TYT Th-UVF9. It talks more but is less usable, owing to important parameters not being able to be set from the keypad directly.

  9. Holy cow! That looks just like my Yaesu FTM-350. I wonder what Yaesu/Vertex thinks about the copying of their products? Interesting however…

    • There’s a big difference between Alibaba and AliExpress. On Alibaba manufacturers often announce a product which might not be available for a long time to come. Only when it’s listed on AliExpress you can actually buy it.

      Some radios once listed on Alibaba never even saw the light of day, such as the Kydera NC-UV90A, a radio I wrote about in 2012.

      The VR-6600P radio is still 2 months from production, expected price point is $420.

      • Your spot on right. I got an email from the “seller” saying they are currently under development and two months out without a price. Sorry for the false call, not accustomed to such “advertising”.

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