What is the WORST rig you've ever had?

Worst rig?

Worst rig I have ever had (or still have)?

Tempo One. It's awful. Cannot hold on a frequency and after several repairs, it just won't stay stable! Need something good for CW and RTTY and a good one has been anything Kenwood.

 

Vx-1r

The Yaesu VX-1R is the worse radio I have ever owned. I wanted something small and compact for listening, maybe local TX. Well the thing was as deaf as a door nail couldn't even hear the strong local NOAA WX, forget about the local repeater. Went out on the Boat in Boston harbor, I dropped the radio into the harbor accidentally. Oh well, if anyone wants it is between Fore River Ship Yard and Long Island Hospital. Plus the radio had this stupid Band Switch thing, everything was in a band. Piece of garbage. The Diamond antenna I had on it was worth more then the radio.

 

1) After homebrew rigs that don't go at all my worst transmitter was a 1970's Brit manufactured KW Valiant. All valve/tube and a very cramped 50W AM/FM/CW HF rig with a tube only era resemblance to LSI (Large Scale Integration). It started smoking then blew a few tubes, resistors, PSU parts ...
'This is an argument for giving up smoking if I ever heard one.'

2) Marantz/Standard C156E 2m handheld txcr. Shortly after I bought this economy rig advertised in RSGB magazine the plastic case started bio-degrading ... no joke. Still have it, held together with various tapes, cable ties and a police type holster to buck up the 'stuctural integrity' ...
'Whoops, outside your cheap plastic head Marantz.'

 

ICOM , THE WORST. just wasnt that good my kenwwod is awesome cant wait for my ts2000.

 

Fortunately, I never owned the thing.....

.....but by far the worst rig I ever used was a Kenwood TS950....hands down. Absolutely hideous reciprocal mixing....every CW station received created multiple internally generated key clicks across the entire band.....totally unusable for CW. And this was an EXPENSIVE rig.

Perhaps this was a fluke that got off the factory floor with a defect...but it was SOOOOO bad I've never gone near a Kenwood since.

Eric

 

Oh, darn i hate to see that kenwoods can be bad rigs sometimes, ah well nuttin is perfect, i am goin for the ts2000 so far all say its worth it and love it i sure hope so, its very expensive.

 

Ft-7100m

I would bestow the 'honor' of Worst Rig to the venerable Yaesu FT-7100M Dual Band (VHF/UHF) radio. I wonder why I found little mention of this radio in the first ten pages of comments and then figured that word got out fast enough about them.

4. Front panel seemed designed for right hand drive cars. The band activity lights were located immediately to the right of the volume/squelch stack knobs. There seemed no position you could mount a radio and see the activity light - even at night.

3. Frequency knob adjustment - the detent was so soft that if you hit a hard bump in the road the radio could change frequency and the encoder was so bad that you could spin the knob faster than the encoder could keep up with the changes. Ten quick clicks or two regular, they both amounted to 10 KHz frequency change.

2. Deviation - on my two 7100M's the deviation was either 3 KHz or 8 KHz. You had to hack into the radio and attack the circuit board if you wanted to adjust that. There were active components in the microphone but not documented in the schematics.

1. Receiver was wider than my Icom R-10 scanner. This radio heard everything - simultaneously!

Both of these radios exhibited these problems. At first I thought it was just the RF rich environment of the Phoenix metro area, but after moving to a remote region of north Texas, population 3,750 I decided it really was the radio. They were both sold at the very next Ham-Con.

73 all!
Moe Knight
NT7C

 

Regarding worst radios

Having had the pleasure of owning and operating many radios and after reading some of the posts here I find it hard to believe that some of the comments were about radios I once owned.

Would it be possible that someone did not pay proper attention to grounding, proper voltages, antenna placements ad such insignificant things as to cause the radios to fail?

I'll give you the Azdens and ADI's they are and were poor radios, but I have never had a bad name brand radio.

 

That was a fun read.

I went through the list, or at least a better part of it.
I get a kick out of the guys that complain about the DC to Daylight HT's that have Intermod issues. Yeah, no kidding.

I saw many people chime in about the Kenwood 241 display issues. Yep, there is a connector that runs the display. It's somehow mounted to the board but the board side legs are not soldered to the board, only the mounting tabs. I bit of fine solder and a small tip iron and the issue is resolved.

I saw many mentions of the old drifters. The Siltronix, Echo, Jupiter, and others with the VFO's that would drift all over the place. I try to be understanding about these sort of comments, but can't. I have several signal generators that were top of the line military spec gear from the same time period. They do the same crap for hours after they are powered on. It's to the point that if I need to use them, I fire them up the night before and let them stablize before use. If that sort of gear drifts it's little wonder that ham gear would do similar things.

I have never found a piece of gear that I was unhappy with. And only one that I couldn't fix (struck by lightning). I enjoy working in radio's and dealing with their quirks, everything has quirks.

 

My Picks

Knight T-60 - Harmonic Generator
Ocean Hopper - Nice and fun radio, but worthless on upper bands
Kenwood TS-440S - Could not keep RF out of the rig. Just poor
Icom 746 - Way to much blow by in the IF. Great concept.

 

WORST RADIO?

By far the WORST ham radio I EVER owned or operated is a Yaesu FT-857D. I would NOT take one for FREE if I were required to KEEP it & OPERATE it & NOT be allowed to sell it.I HATE NOISE in my receiver & this rig will NOT get rid of MOST noise that other rigs do not even know is there.This is an EXCUSE for a multi band all mode rig.Save the headache & buy an ICOM if given the choice.

CLAYTON
W4KVW

 

The "worst radios" are fairly numerous. First is the Atlas 215, it never ran more than a few days at a time though small and inovative. National's early transceivers, NCX-3, NCX-200, and NCX-500. None worth 2 cents on CW, and not alot better on other modes for that matter, worst frequency dial of all time, I think.

The NCX-5 wasn't any better on CW but overall, a great improvement over the NCX-3 and and other early National xceivers, the mechanical dial was slick and tracked very well.

 

Eico 753. But I still have fond memories of it

Certified by 35 other hams on eham reviews. SOrt by review.
http://www.eham.net/reviews/products/14

I see my review is still there....

It was better than the DX60 and xtal I was using! My elmer loaded me this rig when I upgraded to Advanced in 1974 so at 14 years old I would do anything to get on the air. This rig took full advantage of my attitude. I ended up leaving the top cover off and was lucky when it made it through a QSO without something breaking! THere was always smoke or an arc and radio down. I would race to get it fixed before my QSO left me.

 

New Ham...

I sure hope that the Icom IC-718 doesn't make it to this list eventually - as it is my first radio. I also managed to pick up a Kenwood TS-120S for next to nothing. I hope it doesn't take a hit on someone's list - either.

Maybe someone should document the loser rigs after a few more days and tally the results that made the worst from this thread - and to include all of those radios that deserve dishonerable mention.

Maybe the mfr's would read it - and cringe!

 

By far the worst rig....FT-747GX

I <unfortunately> owned a FT-747GX HF rig that I purchased on EBay for (at the time) a decent market price. I read in earlier posts that the '747 was called the 'plastic fantastic', and it wasn't until I received the rig from the seller that I understood why. Gawd - that thing was CHEAPLY put together and was wired with the cheapest garbage that could be found (vinyl covered 24AWG stranded wire). The entire case was made of plastic and had a REAL cheap feel to it - there was none of the 'heft' you'd expect from a Yaesu rig. Not only that, but the rig was controlled by an ASIC on the main board that, if it was acting up, pretty much screwed anyone from getting the thing to work. The main board was 80% of the rig - there was nothing modular about it at all to make any repair at a reasonable cost. Mine developed a display problem 3 weeks into its use from the day it arrived that made it impossible for me to know where I was tuned and what Rx and Tx levels were (all display the elements were on). So, after 3 weeks of operation, I ended up selling it on QTH.com for parts and took a severe beating on what I spent to 'own' it. Bought an FT100D and never looked back.</unfortunately>