[Yaesu] RE: First picture of the Yaesu FT-2000

Sat May 15 09:52:49 EDT 2004

> I'd suspect that this is more a triumph of marketing over engineering.

I started to reply that you had missed the point, but as I reread your
post looking to trim the quote to just the relevant part, I got to it
down to this one sentence which IS the point.
This radio is intended to be the "flagship" of the Yaesu line -- the
radio everyone aspires to own but knows they can't have. (And, like you,
most honestly realize they don't need and wouldn't even bother learning
most of those knobs, buttons, and switches).
The radio is not meant to be sold to hams interested in actually making
QSOs -- the only hams who will buy this radio and talk on it will be
doing so just so they can drop the information into the QSO "The rig
here is a new Yaesu FT2000, what are you running?"
Yaesu isn't going to bother making very many of these -- and the vast
majority of the ones they do ship will just sit on display at the few
ham radio stores that actually still have showrooms. It will be the
radio the customer can stop and stare at while the salesman waits a
reasonable interval then comes over to sell them something more
realistic.
A few of these radios (or their Icom brothers) will make their way into
movie studio prop rooms for use when they want something with lots of
knobs and switches on it. You might notice that most movies that want
to show someone using a radio tend to use a ham HF rig no matter what
the radio is actually supposed to be - the reason, of course, is that
ham radios are made with lots of knobs, buttons, and switches while
modern commercial radios barely have a power button and a channel knob.
On the other hand, in defense of all these Flagship Radios, I would
point out that they generally are excellent radios and the features
generally do work. YOU may not need all the features, but it is a very
good bet that the radio does have every feature you DO need -- and for
each feature there probably is some ham somewhere who does want that
particular feature.
How many people use Microsoft Word as their "word processor" program
without ever doing more than type simple text? Working with computers I
frequently hear the complaint that some program is "too complicated" -- 
almost always followed by "I can't learn all these features -- and I'll
never need most of them anyway!" My reply is always the same. I ask
the person why they would want to learn a feature that they don't expect
to need??? The point is that these Flagship Radios are a lot like
modern business software - they try to have every feature that anyone
anywhere might be looking for. Such products look complicated -- and ARE
complicated IF you try to learn the product instead of just learning how
to do whatever it is you need the product to do.
73 de N4AOF