Railfan Technology > A second look at the Anytone AT-D878UVII portable radio

I have now owned an Anytone AT-D878UVII dual-band analog/DMR digital portable radio for almost 2 years.  I will start off with this—if you are a railfan looking for a simple, easy-to-program radio for railfanning, the AT-D878UVII is NOT the radio for you. The AT-D878UVII is a very sophisticated, complicated to program, and potentially complex-to-use radio, even for relatively experienced radio users.  In almost two years of using this radio, I haven’t learned or utilized many of its numerous features—most of which are unnecessary to use for railfanning purposes.  The AT-D878UVII can best be considered as a radio with both analog and digital capabilities (specifically DMR digital--the AT-D878UVII will NOT decode NXDN) useful to amateur radio operators, but that can be also "co-configured" for railfan use.  I know some amateur radio users who are also railfans who use the AT-D878UVII in this manner.
 
Since I am an amateur radio operator myself, that is why the AT-D878UVII is in my “stable” of portable radios.  I’m not going to go into the details of how to set the AT-D878UVII up for railfanning, but it can be done and, so configured, it can operate fairly effectively as a railfanning “scanner” in that role.  In fact, its scanning function is one of the better ones in a “non-scanner” radio, though adding or deleting a channel from a scan list is needlessly complicated.
 
In some earlier posts about the AT-D878UVII, I lamented its relatively mediocre reception performance, me calling the radio “pretty deaf” when it came to receiving weak signals.  Oddly, I found somewhat of a solution to that problem from a surprising source.  In my original tests of the AT-D878UVII, I tried numerous dual-band antennas from various sources (including the AT-D878UVII's stock antenna) , none of which seemed to help its weak signal reception performance much at all.  Then, while doing some side-by-side testing a few days ago, I put the stock dual-band antenna that came with a Quansheng UV-K5 (8) on the AT-D878UVII.  Amazingly, that antenna significantly “woke up” the AT-D878UVII’s weak signal reception to the point that it now compares fairly favorably to some of my better receiving radios.  That Quansheng antenna is a fairly stiff 8” antenna, so it may not be the most convenient for some folks to carry on the AT-D878UVII because of the antenna’s stiffness, but it works better on the AT-D878UVII than any other antenna that I’ve tried.  Up until now, the AT-D878UVII has mostly languished in my radio drawer because of its mediocre reception.  With its “new” antenna, I will probably take it railfanning more often, especially on long days when its very good battery life (see below) is advantageous.
 
A few other notes about the AT-D878UVII, if one is considering buying one.  It is not an “inexpensive” radio at around $200-$250 street price.  Unlike most other radios in that price range, the AT-D878UVII is still a “system-on-chip” radio, not a heterodyne radio, but it seems to perform pretty well at rejecting interference despite being an SOC radio.  The AT-D878UVII has a commercial quality case that is decently robust to physical abuse.  The AT-D878UVII does not have USB charging capability as standard and uses a charging cradle that charges the battery fairly rapidly.  The AT-D878UVII has excellent battery life between recharges, and will generally last a day or more of railfanning before needing to be recharged.
 
In conclusion, if you are looking for a relatively simple portable radio for railfanning, stick with the Uniden BC125AT, BCD160DN, the Quansheng UVK5 (8) family, or the Tidradio TD-H3.  If you are an amateur radio person who wants to dabble in DMR and have a portable radio that can do double duty as a railfanning radio, then the AT-D878UVII might be worth a look.  As always, I will try to answer questions.
 

Thank you for a well-written and informative piece there!
I am a licensed ham and your comments about complexity resonate wtih me.  I inherited a Yaesu FT-3DR a couple of years ago, and was excited that the display was going to be the answer to my vision problems (i.e., constantly having to reach for my reading glasses to read the frequency, the many function labels on the keypad, the tiny icons in the display, etc.).  But even that radio has so many options that I never find the time to sort them out and program it and really learn to use it.  
On a similar note, 5 or 6 years ago I sent to HRO to buy an FT-60, a good workhorse 2M handheld, and let an enthusiastic salesman upsell me to the FT-70, which he was quick to demonstrate features I don't need, like C4FM and other digital functions. So now I have a radio with terrible batterly life, which I never use and--should i need it in an emergency--will fail to function on account of the battery life issues.
So the challenge for me -- and maybe some others -- is how to find a radio that had great reception and audio, an easy to read display, long battery life (like the old VX-150), is not too hard to program, and doesn't have a lot of unnecessary settings and functions to confuse things.

hotrail,

You have hit on the reason that I have a whole cabinet full of various portable (and a few mobile) radios that spend a lot of time gathering dust.  Finding a radio that checks all the boxes that you listed is exceedingly difficult, particularly if one is looking for a dual-band radio that will receive both VHF for railroad voice comms, and UHF for the train telemetry "blips."  I've mentioned a few radios over the past couple of months on this forum that come close, but none is the nirvana that I would like.  

A fellow railfan asked me one day if I had to pick just ONE portable radio for railfanning, what would it be?  For me, that would mean foregoing the UHF band, and my choice would be the commercial Icom IC-F3161DT VHF analog/NXDN portable radio or its IC-F3261DT successor.  That 3161 has been my workhorse radio for both my prior work and one that I still will sometimes use for railfanning today.  It is a bear to initially PC program with all of the AAR channels, and to set up all the various buttons, etc. for ideal railfanning use, but--once set up--that stuff doesn't have to be touched again for a long time--if ever.  The 3161/3261, properly configured, is easy to use, has superior reception, good audio quality and output, good battery life, good physical ruggedness, and very good reliability.  Its only downside is the lack of UHF capability.  And, yes, one option is to carry one of the physically small, inexpensive Chinese radios that I've mentioned to monitor the UHF train telemetry channels, and carry the Icom to monitor the VHF voice channels.  As an aside, the Icom IC-F5061D mobile uses the same programming software as the 3161 portable and can be configured such that buttons, etc. can behave somewhat similarly to those on the portable.  The 5061D is what I use in my railfanning vehicle and it has served me very well for over a decade.  If one needs proof of the efficacy of the 3161/3261, check around and see what most any railroad conductor, brakeman, or MOW employee is carrying for a portable radio.  It's likely about a 90% chance it will either be an Icom 3161/3261 (or an Icom successor model) or a Kenwood NX-210.  (The Kenwood NX-210 and its "cousin" the NX-200 are also very good portable radios--I own an NX-200 that I also will carry fairly often--it's 7 years old and still going strong.)

Like you, I was a fan of the old Vertex/Yaesu VX-150.  I had one for years, but a few years ago, if suffered a major circuit board failure and I junked it.  I still have an old Vertex VX-170 that was a "cousin" to the VX-150.  Though the VX-170 supposedly had most of the same circuitry as the VX-150, my VX-170 has always been less sensitive than the VX-150 was.  I keep my VX-170 in my winter survival kit pack in my vehicle for amateur radio use in an emergency, not for railfanning.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/24 17:44 by WW.