This post will probably serve no purpose, so I guess it's just a vent
I have had my 800 for about a month and is the first dedicated scanner I have ever owned, but have owned Ham and Commercial HT's since there was such a thing.
My overall impression is "I love it", but for the life of me I can't figure out what the designers were thinking when they took the only, easy to access knob, and wasted it on squelch, then made the volume part of a multifunction, difficult to find by feel, mp3 player type control.
With the scanner sitting on my desk running in the background all day, the squelch is something I might adjust two or three times, if at all, but the volume gets tweeked pretty much all day, especially everytime I answer the phone or someone walks into my office. If I have the usb cable plugged in for power, I have to hold the antenna with my left hand while adjusting with my right to keep from knocking the radio over.
When I ride my motorcycle, I plug in my single earbud and stick the radio in my shirt pocket. (CAUTION! Since one end of my beltclip pin slipped out, I no longer trust the belt clip so on the motorcycle it always goes in the pocket. YMMV) It would be nice if I could briefly reach my hand inside my jacket to adjust the volume according to speed and noise, like all of my other HT's. With the mp3 control, I have to slip it partially out of my pocket and try to hold onto the radio and at the same time feel the volume with my right thumb, (which also happens to be the throttle hand but cruise control helps). If you "fat-thumb" the volume, you can accidentally enter Browse mode and it will quit scanning.
When I'm in a car, depending on the car/sunvisor, I clip the radio to the sunvisor, otherwise it's back in the pocket, with that stupid squelch knob poking out. When I need to adjust the volume it really only requires a brief glance to find the control, but I'd rather be able to do it by feel.
If I could make only one change to this radio it would be to swap the volume and squelch controls.
Kermit
I have had my 800 for about a month and is the first dedicated scanner I have ever owned, but have owned Ham and Commercial HT's since there was such a thing.
My overall impression is "I love it", but for the life of me I can't figure out what the designers were thinking when they took the only, easy to access knob, and wasted it on squelch, then made the volume part of a multifunction, difficult to find by feel, mp3 player type control.
With the scanner sitting on my desk running in the background all day, the squelch is something I might adjust two or three times, if at all, but the volume gets tweeked pretty much all day, especially everytime I answer the phone or someone walks into my office. If I have the usb cable plugged in for power, I have to hold the antenna with my left hand while adjusting with my right to keep from knocking the radio over.
When I ride my motorcycle, I plug in my single earbud and stick the radio in my shirt pocket. (CAUTION! Since one end of my beltclip pin slipped out, I no longer trust the belt clip so on the motorcycle it always goes in the pocket. YMMV) It would be nice if I could briefly reach my hand inside my jacket to adjust the volume according to speed and noise, like all of my other HT's. With the mp3 control, I have to slip it partially out of my pocket and try to hold onto the radio and at the same time feel the volume with my right thumb, (which also happens to be the throttle hand but cruise control helps). If you "fat-thumb" the volume, you can accidentally enter Browse mode and it will quit scanning.
When I'm in a car, depending on the car/sunvisor, I clip the radio to the sunvisor, otherwise it's back in the pocket, with that stupid squelch knob poking out. When I need to adjust the volume it really only requires a brief glance to find the control, but I'd rather be able to do it by feel.
If I could make only one change to this radio it would be to swap the volume and squelch controls.
Kermit
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