New Radio Day

New Radio

Over the summer, my existing mobile radio--a BTECH UV-50X3--stopped functioning. That was mostly a bummer, I'd been pretty happy with the radio, but the promise of moving onto something a bit more capable was rather appealing. I spent the last several months researching, reading reviews, and thinking about what I wanted out of a new radio. I have quite a bit of experience with DMR, due to the availability of cheap DMR handsets, and wanted to branch out into other digital modes. I also wanted to minimize modifications to my vehicle and a remote control head to simplify installation. I ended up deciding on the Yaesu FTM-500DR.

I had to pick up a few extra install components (Yaesu really wants you to screw stuff into the dash), but otherwise things could not have been simpler. I'd previously used Anderson Powerpoles when installing the older BTECH radio. As a result, swapping in the Yaesu was as simple as unclipping the leads to the BTECH and swapping them over. I spent longer on the zip ties keeping things tidy than on getting power to the radio. Within about 30 minutes, I had everything strapped into place, zip tied out of the way, and ready to get on the air.

Handset Programming

Unfortunately, programming software for the FTM-500 is a bit limited. There's not an ADMS version available for this radio (yet?). There's software available from RTSystems, but it's not open-source and was only available for Windows and Mac. I decided to try programming the radio directly from the faceplate before buying software. This has been super helpful.

It's nice that the radio has a quick workflow for programming frequencies--other radios I've had would've made this quite difficult. I've become so much more comfortable operating this radio after spending a couple hours plugging in repeaters, configuring preferences, and checking out wide-band receive on the VFO.

I expected to configure a repeater or two, find it slow, and use that to justify the rather minimal cost of the CPS. That's no longer my plan. Once ADMS supports the FTM-500, I expect I'll download it "just in case". I'm in no rush, though, and am enjoying getting a lot of practice.

Interestingly, I haven't spent that much longer working with this radio than I might spend setting up a new DMR HT. Setting up drivers and communication between a computer and a handset is always a chore, especially if Linux tools aren't available.

Attributions

Thumbnail: "Radio Tower" by Phil Edmonds is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0