To put simply the 70DR is going to be 199.99 radio, yaesu goal with this has been to attract the low end of the radio market ,it's another dual band with a single receiver design , I like my dual banders to be truly dual band am a bit old fashioned in, talking to yaesu they have made it pretty clear that they are trying to lure the CCR crowd into a radio that is there digital Flavor , problem is the radio doesnt have much to offer over a CCR , aside from digital which might be a great thing if you live somewhere with a bunch of fusion machines, but do far in most places the penetration is low and they have already started trying to upgrade clubs from Dr 1 x to the new Dr 2x machines , so much of the market is in flux , there marketing department has been working over time to crank things out , and yaesu is aware of how bizzare this all is considering that the differences between the 70R and the FT 1 is night and day with only $40 seperating the prices between a dual band single reciever and a full function dual band dual reciever radio , technical ( with no one officially confirming this ) but it looks like the FT 1 is going to be sold out and dropped , leaving the 70R entry level and the FT 2 being top off the line, which even the guys at yaesu don't understand because the FT 1 has a lot going for it( as per customer sales and satisfaction) compared to the FT 2 which is pretty much a hated radio , that has some serious problems with the software , one of the major ones is certain settings can be selected that seperately are fine but combined give the appearance of working transmitting radio but it doesn't transmit anything or give any warning that the two settings are incomparable, the FT1 scores a 4.6 in customer likes and reviews, the FT2 gets a 2 ,so it might make sense to marketing, but leaves the rest of us scratching there heads .
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