[Jim]

I find that the FT-890 is the type of radio that says: ‘amateur radio’. Let me explain. When I first discovered Yaesu in the late sixties, those radios still looked ‘old school’. They included the FR-50B receiver and FL-50B transmitter. I had seen them at a shop near Montreal with my dad. Years passed before I went back to an actual shop. Sometime in the mid-seventies, I went back to that shop and discovered the Yaesu FT-101. I was smitten. I don’t know why, but it just looked so modern. That, I guess, became my benchmark for what a ‘radio’ should look like. In later years I think I bought radios that looked like it, including a massive Sony SWL radio I bought, I don’t remember the model number (it even had a built in cassette) but I bought it, I still believe, because it looked like the FT-101. Fast forward to your radio Anthony, and it’s still in the same vein. Granted, I am talking aesthetics more than performance but let’s all be honest for a moment. We buy radios for their performance ‘as well as’ for how they make us feel. Do I like the latest radios with waterfalls and menus a mile deep? Sure I do, of course I do. But my ‘reference’ will I think, always remain the generation that began with the FT-101 and, in my mind, includes the 890.