 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Yupiteru MVT-7100
It has been some years since Yupiteru brought out the Yupiteru MVT-7100, 13 Years in fact! I remember purchasing one all those years ago. The reports on sensitivity and how this fine scanner picked up signals other radios did not hear was enough for me, especially after owning a couple of stone deaf AOR 2000's. After reading several messages recently on various internet newsgroups and message boards asking where one should purchase this receiver, I usually reply "Don't bother, it's past its sell by date feature wise". I mean, it has no computer control, no ctcss/dcs capability and no Alpha tagging. Features that identify those radio users you are listening to. But this scanner continues to sell by the bucket load. Also you see lots of messages now on various internet newsgroups asking why someone's teenage 7100 is developing faults such as not being able to keep it's memories etc. The answer my friends is simple. Your 7100 is nearing the end of its natural life. We all have to die sometime and 13 years is a good age and you really have had your moneys worth. After doing numerous reviews on this site for all the latest scanners, I decided the Yupi should be given a fair trial rather than me slating it for being too long in the tooth. Also those people I previously mentioned who's yupi's are nearing the end of their life should they go for a more "Fully featured" model or get another 7100? Hopefully by the end of this review I will have helped you make your choice. My immediate thoughts when I had confirmation from Nevada Communications that they had sent me a 7100 for review was remembering how bloody hard I found it to program. This I was not looking forward to. On receipt of the Yupi the first thing that struck me was how the box and it's contents are exactly the same as they were 13 years ago, talk about resting on your Laurels! At least they still supply 4 Ni-Cd batteries (Yes the very same brand from 13 years ago!) Which is a nice touch. The recess for the battery compartment is quite deep and Yupiteru have added a ribbon for making the removal of the batteries an easy task, by adding a ribbon inside, to which you correctly seat the batteries and when you wish to remove them you simply pull the tab of the ribbon and out they all come! Ni-cads??? Do people still use them? Boy was I going to give this scanner a hard time on the review. To me this scanner was way past it's sell by date and should have been put in it's grave a long time ago replaced by a Yupi new model complete with many more features. You also get a user manual, hand strap/ AC adapter (Charger) Cigarette lighter charger and a belt clip. I was happy to see they still come with the telescopic aerial it did years ago as I always rated this for pulling in the signals, even when I sold my Yupi I kept the aerie. Taking out the scanner I took one in the eye when My daughter said to me, "That's nice dad it's better than yours" The cheek! I mean what does she know about scanners anyway? The top of the unit has a BNC connection for the antenna, On/Off/Volume Knob, Squelch control and a tuning knob. On the left (As you look at it) are 3 buttons. One for Lamp, one for Monitor and one for Key lock. Also is a small hole for resetting the units memories. The lamp does an ample job is green in colour but only stays on for as long as you keep the button depressed. I would like to have seen a more permanent option. Not only is the display lit up but also the keypad for night time control. The monitor button is used for receiving signals that are distant and are fading in and out. Always a welcome addition this. The Key lock locks everything except the volume and squelch controls and the light and monitor buttons. On the right side of the unit is a fitting where you attach the wrist strap. (That's if you bother with one I never do) The earphone jack and the power plug are also on the same side of the unit. Display The 7100 gives an adequately sized display where you view all
the info such as scanning mode, current frequencies, ch number, bank number,
mode etc. I found viewing to be OK until I looked down on the unit and then all the information was hard to see. Which resulted in a number of cases my tilting the scanner back. Good job the telescopic supplied has a knuckle joint just for these occasions. In fact the best viewing angle is from looking from underneath the unit. Looking straight on is adequate but I feel some sort of contrast control would have been much better. I'm sure previous Yupi's had this feature? Signal strength is shown via a 9 segment graph. 1 segment equating to a poor signal and the 9th a very strong signal. Step sizes and mode FM: 1 KHz, 5 KHz, 6.25 KHz,(Very nice) 9 KHz, 10 KHz, 12.5 KHz, 20 KHz, 25 KHz, 50 KHz and 100 KHz. Wide FM: 50 KHz, 100 KHz AM: 1 KHz, 5 KHz, 6.25 KHz, 9 KHz, 10 KHz, 12.5 KHz, 20 KHz, 25 KHz, 50 KHz and 100 KHz USB/LSB: 50 Hz, 100 Hz, 1 KHz, 5 KHz, 6.25 KHz, 9 KHz, 10 KHz, 12.5 KHz, 20 KHz, 25 KHz, 50 KHz and 100 KHz. The 7100 is very similar in size to the Pro-43 (Another classic scanner) but is very light in the hand. It is probably a shade heavier than my Uniden 396T but the smaller size of the 396 gives a nicer "heft" but rest assured this scanner will not pull your trousers down if using the belt clip. In use After powering up the batteries I hastily turned it on and looked through the manual to program some frequencies into memory. Now I don't know why I found this hard all those years ago but I found the manual very easy to understand and within a couple of minutes I was searching, storing frequencies into memory with very little effort. In fact when I switched back to my 396 I found myself hitting all the wrong buttons, going to do a certain function the way I would with the 7100 e.g. hitting the 6 button for scan as it is in the same position the scan button is on the Yupi. One thing I did notice when I manually entered frequencies into a search or whatever, it would stay on the mode it was already sat on. e.g. if it is currently on a uhf frequency and I then set an airband frequency, rather than like most scanners it sets the correct mode, in this case am mode it will stay on fm mode. This is a bonus or a negative depending on how you look at it. Countless times I have used a scanner destined for the US market typed a frequency in and it's defaulted to the US band plan mode, resulting in my having to switch to the UK mode for that frequency. Now that always annoys me to a degree but now I have a scanner in my hands destined for the UK/European market and I still find that it is not setting to the correct mode. I mean we have taken it for granted that if you type in 119.250 then it will default to am mode but with the yupi 7100 this is not the case. It soon became apparent with a few frequencies programmed into memory just why this scanner still sells so well. It receives signals my other scanners fail to hear. Or ones they struggle to hear come in loud and clear. Searching through all the bands shows this to be the case on most of the bands. On airband though it is only marginally better than my Uniden BCD396T. The signal strength meter gives a good indication of the signal being received. The delay on the Yupi is a bit of a strange one. You have delay on or off. With most scanners I have used delay off means no hanging around, "Once you have said your piece and un keyed your Mike I'm off to find the next active channel". However with the Yupi it pauses for 2 seconds. Delay on means it will pause for 4 seconds. I would say from my brief tests that the Yupi excels on UHF. Using the supplied 6.25KHz steps allowed me to program in all 8 pmr 446 ch's. Ch1 446.00625 Believe me the signals came in from all directions. Comparing to other scanners there was no comparison the Yupi hailed the winner on all accounts. In fact it was better than dedicated PMR 446 radios I have owned in the past when it came to detecting them. Signals that were not heard on other scanners were heard on the Yupi. Signals that were barely audible on other scanners were heard loud and clear on the Yupi. I had heard that the selectivity on the Yupi was second to none. To test this I keyed up on ch 8 with the radio inches away from the scanner and watched in amazement as the Yupi ignored all the other 7 ch's and only stopping on the correct channel. This was very impressive as other scanners with a transmission this close would stop on any or if not all of the other ch's. The sensitivity of this scanner is legendary and I have probably just confirmed what a lot of you already knew. So what if any are the drawbacks if any of having such a sensitive receiver? Well I can think of a couple actually. My main criticism of this scanner has been the lack of features due to its age. There were not many,if any scanners around at that time that had ctcss/dcs capability and with a scanner such as this pulling in signals from all directions then without having an option to use tones to filter users then you are not going to know who you are listening to. Plus with ones you can select who you want to listen to and filter out the other users. Not only this but the Yupi is troubled with interference on a large range of frequencies. So much so that My local fire channel has to be locked out of scan due to interference. This comes in the guise of noise like when the squelch is set incorrectly. True I could crank the squelch up but this defeats the object of having a sensitive scanner as it will de-sensitise the reception capabilities. Also true is several other scanners I have owned including my two Uniden's also suffer with interference on this particular fire channel. With My 780 I use the attenuator to rectify the problem Using the attenuator on the 7100 actually kills the frequency stone dead as it is too harsh. I would like to have seen an optional strength attenuator as you have on the Alinco DJX-2000. Memory allocation. The channel arrangement is one most of us will be "au fait" with. its a 10 bank (100 ch's per bank) affair. resulting in 1000 ch's which should be adequate for most people. I remember when the 7100 first came out all those years ago this was simply amazing to have this amount of memory space. There are a number of options for scanning the banks, 6 in fact I will describe some of them briefly as if I go into too much detail this review will end up looking like a user manual. Continuous scan. Where every single frequency that has not been locked out of memory will be scanned. Bank normal. Where you can scan up to 4 banks of memories. To do this you specify the banks you want to scan so if you want to scan banks 3,6 and 7 you simply press 367 and scan. This is a bit of a let down to me there are times that I like to listen to everything except the contents of one bank etc. So a bit more flexibility would have been nice. Memories can be locked out from a scan by pressing Func+Pass. The locked out channels are identified by a flashing "CH" indicator. Retrieval is a laborious scroll through each individual channel to find them. To open them up again is a repeat key press sequence of Func+Pass. Whilst scanning to hold on an interesting channel simply press "MR" or "Scan" to halt the scan. Easy! Something I have seen little point in having on some scanners is a skip feature which usually comes on default. What this is, is a feature that when in scan mode the scanner stops on an active ch for 5 seconds before resuming even if the conversation is still taking place. This used to confuse the hell out of me when I first came across it on a scanner and when I realised the scanner was not faulty I quickly de-activated the feature and never used it again. However having many years experience has taught me that this can actually be a nice feature to have. I have utilised it on my Uniden UBC780 so that when it stops on Amateur radio enthusiasts it holds for a certain time and then resumes scanning. The reason for this is 90% of amateur radio enthusiasts are boring to listen to. I know I am going to ruffle some feathers here but it is true I have never come across such a boring lot of individuals. However 10% of them have something worth listening to and it is for these occasions the "Skip" feature comes in handy giving me ample time to see if they have anything worth listening to and if so I simply hold onto the channel if not then I don't have to keep pressing scan as it will automatically be done for me. The Yupi 7100 has this feature but you are limited to 5 seconds which to me is not long enough. With the 780 it is far more flexible giving up to 10 seconds also it can be done on a per channel basis whereas with the Yupi its all or nothing. This feature will be down to the individual user whether or not they will use it. The audio is lovely with no distortion, even when cranked up to full volume. I could not help thinking though that maybe an NFM option could have made the audio that bit crisper. Scan speeds are advertised as 30 Ch's per second. Adequate but I would like faster. One user, a very close strong signal on 167 MHz was heard on several other frequencies but in all fairness they are on my UBC780 and BCD 396T so I have no real criticisms there. Listening to short wave radio has not been an area I am au fait with. I remember programming in 5.680 into all scanners I have owned with short wave capability and never hearing anything on any of them. One chap wrote in with his experience of short waving with the 7100 and I quote below. " Since you're writing a review I thought I'd let you
know my own Searching Whilst in a search you can lockout any frequencies so that they will no longer be monitored in future searches. This is a very good feature especially as the 7100 picks up plenty of internal dead signals (Birdies we used to call them). Yupiteru call this feature "search pass". These locked out or passed frequencies can later be recalled for review and if one wants put back into a search by using the SPR (Search pass recovery) function. Again there are times I would find this a feature worth having. So What else is there? Well first of all we have the obligatory priority ch. Can't be doing without one of them now can we? Shame it's restricted to be ch 1000 and not any of your choice. So let's get this right, If I want to change my priority ch I have to program it over the frequency I have set up already have programmed in ch 1000 and I have to do this every time I want to assign a different priority ch? Hmmm... The sampling of the priority ch takes place approx every 5 seconds. I am used to 2 seconds but for some people they may be happy with 5 as I suppose you don't get so many interruptions when monitoring other frequencies due to the constant priority check pauses. On the negative side you could miss important snippets of information on your chosen priority ch due to the infrequent checks. Like I say it's down to personal choice. Battery saver Yes it has one and a good job too as I found the Yupi gets hungry whilst scanning and consumes its batteries. I didn't do a length test but I would hazard a guess at maybe 5-6 hours use out of the batteries. I assumed the battery saver circuit would work automatically whilst sat on a quiet channel, however this does not appear to be the case, apparently you have to manually select the battery saver. So I can't see myself ever remembering to do that each time I am sat on a channel waiting for activity. Final conclusions. I never really expected to give this scanner a lot of credit before the review but I am pleased to say that I can see why this unit still remains a number one seller. The ease of use being one reason and the sensitivity is second to none, brilliant for pulling in those distant signals. Is it for you? Well if you are looking for a very sensitive scanner with ease of use then yes. 1000 channels will suffice for a lot of people also. If you were happy with your ageing Yupi 7100 then why not get a new one? It's every bit as good to day as it was all those years ago. If you need more features such as ctcss/dcs decoding, alpha tags etc. then this may not be the unit for you. The Yupiteru MVT7100 at the time of writing sells for £199.95 from Nevada communications .
I would like to take
time to thank the Nevada team for the loan of this scanner. 06/2006.
|
|
reviewed.[ Aor 8200 ]
New to scanning?Download our introduction to scanning guide . The new scanner user will have plenty of questions to ask hopefully this guide will answer most of your questions . |
Copyright © 2006 UKMidlandscanner.co.uk All Rights Reserved.
|
