A few weeks ago I went on the hunt for an FT-950. I/’ve always wanted one and believed it would make a nice home rig for my activities – mainly chasing WWFF and SOTA activators when I’m at home.
I scoured the second hand websites, Gumtree, Facebook and eBay and found two. One on eBay out of Japan, and one in a “something’s not quite right” condition out of the UK. Unfortunately the one in Japan sold before I could pull the trigger and so I sent the seller of the one in the UK a message – it was on open auction and I didn’t want to buy a dud unit. On a chance it was a user error I asked the seller to perform a factory reset on the radio, and hey, presto, the issues disappeared, so I made an offer, the seller re-listed the item as it was now in working condition (not possibly faulty as was originally listed) and I bought it.
Roughly 3 weeks later and it finally arrived here to me in Aus. Not bad considering the state of global affairs. I’ve only had one afternoon with it, but I have to say I’m pretty happy with it. It’s going to make a very nice home station rig for chasing/hunting various activators.
Yes, there are newer, shinier rigs out there (FT-991a comes to mine), but this does everything I want it to, and I have plenty of buttons to play with, because, who doesn’t like playing with knobs and buttons?
I’ve already 3d printed some feet to lift the front up, and after some feedback from others, they’ll be in my store shortly!
