How does the Xiegu X6200 stack up against other lower power amateur radio transceivers. On one hand, you have the cheaper, but used, Yaesu FT-817/8. On the other hand, you have the more expensive Icom IC-705. At around £800 the Xiegu sits between the two – but where would I put my money?
Having purchased a Xiegu G106 and activated my first POTA (Parks on the Air) site using it, I was pretty impressed. Sure, it was cheap (less than £200 brand new), a bit rough around the edges and undesirable to some amateur radio operators, but it did work, feels really rugged and is more compact than my FT-817 – that has to count for something.
So having been bitten by the POTA bug I thought that I’d splash out and buy something with a few more features, a bit more power and maybe something that I could use to get more experience with voice; not a mode I use much. At the time, the rig everyone was raving about was the Icom IC-705, but that was out of my reach financially.
As is my usual way, I pondered, read reviews, pondered some more, read some more reviews and pondered. In the end, impressed by the Xiegu G106 and undeterred by the iffy reviews of the related X6200 model, I bit the bullet and decided to part with the £800 asking price. To be fair, and in my defence, all of the reviews had been of the pre-production model and I’d hoped that the issues mentioned would be sorted out for the production model; and certainly by the third firmware release that had been issued.
Upon unpacking the new rig I was pretty impressed. The chassis was metal and felt really sturdy, the screen was pretty good and, whilst the menu was a little dis-jointed, it didn’t take long to figure it out. I hooked it up to the ‘big’ antenna at home, signals were received and they were pretty much in line with the impressive Yaesu FT-710 I have as my main rig. The signal reports displayed were a few points off, but I don’t pay too much attention to them – if I can hear them, I can work them.
I was pretty proud of myself as I did make my first HF voice contact for a very long time using the radio. The report received was good, especially given that I was only using four out of the eight watts available to me.
My usual mode of operation on HF is FT8 and so it wasn’t long before the rig was hooked up to the computer. That went pretty well too; and I did like the fact that the connection on the radio was USB-C. There are a couple of Icoms in their current catalog that use micro-USB and even mini-USB. The fact that I use a Mac means that interpreting port identifiers (e.g. /dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART5) is a little more difficult, compared to good old COM2 as used in Windows. However, despite this, all went well and I was on the air relatively quickly. I had to use the Xiegu X6100 profile in WSJT-X, which kind of makes sense given that this is the radio the X6200 replaces. When setting up the G106 I had to do a bit of Googling to realise that you needed to use the Icom IC-7000 profile.
Anyway, all was good and after ten minutes, or so, I packed up and went and had my tea. However, that week I took my new radio to my club night and set everything up to show folk how wrong the reviews had been. All was well, working stations all over Europe on a compromised vertical antenna. After about ten minutes though, there was a static pop which obliterated the waterfall display. I thought it were maybe the building’s central heating unit switching, or maybe even the third rail on the train track that was within thirty feet of the rig.
However, the pops started to come closer together. I was still able to work stations, such is the nature and built-in error correction of FT8. However, after about twenty five minutes or so, it just became a wall of noise at more than S9 (S9+30 on any other radio) and the X6200 became unusable. Feeling the case, I thought it might be temperature related and turned it off. Sure enough, when I tried again the following day back home, the same thing happened again. A firmware update followed and then there was a trip to North Yorkshire. The operating location was miles from the nearest power line, the ambient temperature much cooler, and the RF power output was reduced to about 2.5w. Sadly, the all too familiar popping gradually returned and I came to realise that there was an issue with the transceiver and that it need to go back from whence it came.
Martin Lynch, supplier of said item, were contacted on the fourteenth day following purchase and they agreed to take it back, even supplying a self-print label for free carriage. Given that I was still to read a review of a production model (good or bad), months after it had come to market, I decided that my experience and pre-production reviews suggested that the Xiegu X6200 was probably a radio I wanted to walk away from. Yes, it was half the price of an Icom IC-705, and it contained features you had to pay a lot more for on top of an IC-705 (such as the built-in AMU), but I thought this was probably a false economy and asked ML&S for a refund – which they agreed to without batting an eye-lid.
So my relationship with the Xiegu X6200 lasted just two weeks. The concept is good, the specs are good, but the execution appears flawed. My thanks go to ML&S for the very understanding way with which they dealt with this disappointing purchase.
UPDATE: I have since saved up the extra and purchased an Icom IC-705 and a MAT-705 Plus tuner and enjoyed several successful, and fault-free, operations away from home. This has included working China on just 5w from near the centre of Coventry. Pretty impressive.