Monday, November 07, 2016

Yupiteru VT225 Civil and Military Airband Radio

I'm feeling a bit nostalgic and have decided to buy a Yupiteru VT225 airband receiver I found on Ebay at a reasonable price. I remember buying one of these brand new probably 20+ years ago now!

I remember being impressed with it's performance and ease of use so I thought it would be good to obtain one again and put it against my Uniden UBC125XLT just to see if it is a better performer. It will be a rather 'unscientific' test and I will simply see if the signal strength of ground stations I can currently receive is any better than the 125. In particular, I'll be interested in it's UHF performance which on any radio never seems quite as good as VHF primarily because the 'line of sight' physics become more critical as you increase frequency from VHF through to UHF.

If i decide to stick with it I will have to reduce my current frequency list down to those that I listen to most of all compared with those I have stored on my 125XLT as the VT225 has just 100 memory channels in 10 banks whereas the 125XLT has 500 memory channels in 10 banks. Also, I have come to love the 16 character 'alpha tagging' on the 125 so I can instantly see what I'm listening too! AND, for the first time in my many decades of listening, I'm able to easily program the 125XLT on my computer! 

I guess the performance of the VT225 will need to be measurably better for me to stick with it. The VT225 has been regarded as equal in performance to the venerable Signal R535 and are still quite sought after amongst 'us airbanders' so it will be interesting to see the results of my 'testing' once the radio arrives, watch this space for my findings....

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