If you are wondering what Amateur Radio is about, it's basically a two way radio service where licensed operators throughout the world experiment and communicate with each other on frequencies reserved for license holders. Welcome to Reddit's own amateur (ham) radio club.Does it need to be preset to something else for the FT-817ND with CHIRP? Running Vista 32 with all current updates.Please read our FAQs before posting | Save "I Just Got Licensed" threads for Monday's Sticky| Welcome! The RT Systems supplied ADMS USB-Serial cable is set for 38,400 baud with 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity, and no flow control handshaking. Anyway, I thought I’d let you know what I have found so far. ADMS seems to use some either binary or bcd format for frequencies.
The latest FT-817ND (US) still has the wrong frequency preloaded in location 603, so I’m looking for a way to update it.
I installed CHIRP daily-20120517 and when I try to download from the radio, get the message that shows at the top.
Sure enough, the ADMS software shows you the 60 meter channels at the bottom of the memory listing as channels 601-605, but they are shaded in red, which apparently in ADMS means read-only.
I have the stock RT Systems USB to serial cable (USB-62B) set to COM3 and it works with the ADMS version 4.50.08. I have one of the very newest FT-817ND (US) units, one of the ones that they *just* shipped this month (mid May 2012) after Yaesu had trouble sourcing some parts and then finding some and making them work. “Failed to communicate with radio: Unable to read block 00 expected 4 got 1” Regardless, for the time being CHIRP is (as far as I know) the only way to “fix” your radio! Yaesu has reportedly announced that they do not intend to provide an official update to the radios, although it is unclear if newly-manufactured devices will have the updated channel data. After the upload is complete, restart the radio and verify that memory channel M-603 has been updated. Before you click OK, press the C button on the radio to prepare it to receive the image (assuming you left it on and in clone mode while making the frequency change). The serial port you used before should be in the box and the other settings are implied. Do this by going to Radio -> Upload to Radio. Now you can upload the image back to the radio. Hit enter to finish editing the frequency. Click in the frequency field for memory M-603 and make the change: Memory M-603 needs to change from 5.368MHz to 5.3585MHz (note these are center frequencies, not the normal dial/carrier frequencies you may be used to). At the top, select “Special Channels” to display the M-60x memories: Once the clone progress dialog box appears, initiate the clone from the radio by pressing the A button below the display.Īfter the image download completes, you should see CHIRP’s tabular display of your radios memories. Choose Yaesu, FT-817ND (US Version), the appropriate serial port, and then click OK.
Next, download an image of the radio, by going to Radio -> Download from Radio. Place your radio into clone mode by holding down the two mode keys on top of the display while powering on. The following instructions are for the FT-817ND, the procedure with CHIRP is the same for the other radios. To do this to your radio, you first need a suitably recent build of CHIRP, equal to or later than build 02112012, which you can obtain from the daily build repository. This means that CHIRP can modify this region, allowing the user to update channel M-603 with the newly-granted frequency. In examining the memory image of the current 60-meter-capable FT-817ND radio, it’s apparent that the new channels (which the -ND models added over the originals) are simply tacked onto the end. In February 2012, CHIRP gained support for programming the Yaesu FT-8×7 family of radios, thanks to efforts by Marco IZ3GME. These new rules become effective in March 2012, but they leave existing (unmodified) radios with an outdated channel set. Recently, the FCC changed the grant to loosen the restrictions a bit and replaced one of the channels with a different one to avoid interference. Yaesu did this in their FT-8x7ND rigs by pre-programming special channels into the memory and restricting transmission on 60 meters except while on one of those memories. Recent HF rigs have enabled use of these channels by taking steps to ensure than an unsuspecting operator does not accidentally transmit elsewhere in the band, or with anything other than upper sideband. Unlike most other allocations, these are restricted to phone emissions in upper sideband, with a maximum of 50 watts PEP. In the US starting in 2003, amateurs have had a secondary allocation of five specific channels in the 60 meter band.