(Canceled) Reservations About the New Yaesu FTX-1

Thomas W. shares his thoughts about canceling his pre-reserved purchase of the new Yaesu FTX-1 QRP radio here at the QRPer blog.  If you search down to my thoughts on the matter you can find them there, or here, just have the list now:

• Yeah it's big.  Closer to 'car camping big' than 'backpacking small.'
• But of course it has to be big to put that beautiful waterfall display on the front.  I've really come to like this on my FT-710 (pics, more details), and am glad to see it here.
• Speaking of FT-710, the front panel looks very similar.  I wonder if they kept much the same UI or re-arranged it "just because"?
• That roll cage really splays out from the controls, both making things even bigger overall and giving less protection to the controls.
• Does the roll cage come with a panel that snaps over it to cover the controls when it's shoved in a pack?
• 
  Still beating on the roll cage, whoever designed that thing has never operated a radio in the wild during a backpacking trip.  It's more about "looks tough" than "protects controls."  Portable Zero will probably come out with something much better soon.
• Yes, it does seem to be all-mode on 2m & 70 cm, which puts it into the 'rare gem' category of radios.  That is some good news.
• With the 100w amplifier, that more or less makes it into an FT-710 with VHF/UHF.  For about twice the price.  Hm.
• Picture at right shamelessly stolen from the above-linked article at QRPer.  I hope the author doesn't mind.  Mostly, it's to show how big this thing is with a hand for scale.
• Here's another guy who opted out.  Jump forward to the 8 minute mark for his reasoning.

It all comes down to this thing is a hoss, too big for what a lot of people want to do with a QRP radio.  I'll keep car camping with the FT-710 and backpacking with the FT-817nd for the time being, and wait a while more before deciding on a purchase.  But overall, probably not.

So what do I really want in a new QRP radio?  Starting from the old FT-817/818 series as a baseline:

• First, note that this is just a baseline for a versatile QRP radio, not a call to bring back a dinosaur.
• Add an IF DSP.
• Add an internal speech processor.
• Do a full weight reduction project.  Replace everything steel with aluminum, etc.
• If you've just got to go SDR with a waterfall display, have the waterfall in a separate, optional outboard unit.  Leave the lightweight dial-twiddling joy of a simple QRP radio as still an option.

I see this new radio as something with a lot of promise, but I'm not sure that Yaesu was listening to their growing POTA/SOTA user base that was hoping for something else.  Something a little more field-worthy.  A lot of this seems to be confusion over the concepts of "we can" and "we should."  Time will tell.  But I do see a small number of people who had previously put down deposits walking away, and my prior enthusiasm has considerably cooled.

ps, 5/26: Well, this guy is having a good time doing POTA with his!  FTX-1 is still in the running.