The Ham Radio two point zero Audio podcast rip. Thank you for downloading and
listening to this podcast. So basically what I do is I take all the
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Thank you in seventy three. I hope you enjoy it. What is
the difference between the Yazoo ft DX ten that I have been loving on my
PoTA activations for the last year and this brand new FT seven ten, a
e SS radio that just dropped that looks a lot like the ft d X
ten with some smaller form factor features and a couple of things taken out.
What's the big difference. Well, today I welcome Doug in for H and
H onto the channel, who is who works in the radio industry and is
much smarter about receivers than I am. So check this out. Let me
know what you think of the comments below and enjoy the video. All right,
Doug, Well, thank you for coming back onto the channel again.
For those of you who don't know, Doug is in for H and H
hide nor hair. That's how I remember your call side you go in that
last time. Oh that's good. Okay, So give give us a very
brief history of your background, Doug, because that's pertinent to U to receiver.
The receiver talk. We're going to talk about today about the FT seven
tenth, So tell us a little bit about your channel and then we'll just
hop into it. Okay, Well, a quick overview of my background.
I've been involved with radio professional e Stance fourteenth. My first job was at
a CB radio shop, as many have come from, you know, we've
all a lot of us have come from that era, yes, and in
the seventies, so I had I was just had the privilege of working for
a gentleman who took me under his wing. Just a wonderful guy. So
that led to later on I got to work for Motorola, so I fast
forward it a lot, but and went through all the exams that you have
to go through to be able to work on transmitters, and and I was
Primarily I was a page your technician, and I became a I had to
do all the others. I had to climb the towers and do the installs
too for a while. And then once I passed that General Radio Telephone Operator
license, I was then brought into the portable room again, which is where
pagers were worked on as well, but this time I could work on HT.
So my main thrust was HTS. And so I've been abound round radio
professionally since age fourteen, you know. And I'm not bragging or anything,
but I am glad that I never had to flip burgers. I was always
able to have a job doing something in electronics. Sure makes sense. Good.
So and my channel, my channel began accidentally because I was on the
search for my next base station. Now to clarify that, I've only bought
three, and I've been a HAM since nineteen eighty two, so I went
twenty years between base stations. Now, I had an FT nine twenty and
I had modd at it within red filters and it was really serving me quite
well. Had a DSP fifty nine plus from Time Wave on top of it,
enhancing it some, and so I just I'd go down to hr O.
You know, fortunately I live only thirty minutes from an HR and you
know they got that desk. We can go in there and play. And
I just kept going there and I'd saying, yeah, yeah, I don't
see anything that really rolls me over, that makes me want to give up
twenty but in twenty nineteen, I said, you know what, I'm at
a point now where I want to go ahead and buy my retirement radio.
And I started, I started looking on YouTube and I had narrowed it down
to a particular radio. I guess I shouldn't mention it in here, but
the one I walked out with is not the one that I walked in to
buy. And I actually wound up in it, taking eight months and sitting
there for about two or three hours at a time. The guys in there
just kind of chuckling trying these radios on the air. I you know,
laptests are great, but to me, the rubber meets the road when I
get in there and try to pull an S three signal out of an S
five noise floor. Right, So that's I'll say this. What I walked
out up with eight months later was an FTDX five thousand MP and yes,
I had even tried out the one oh one mph well the D model that
they had on display, but they had the MPN stop. And so that's
the third base station I ever bought. And then along came the f TDX
ten and um, that one was I didn't mean to get it. It
was dropped. It was dropped off by by someone friend of mine who said,
set this thing up for me, and I guess you forgot about it
over He never came back for it. No, he said, shoot,
shoot a bunch of videos. When you're done, I'll take take it to
uh. I'll take it and put it in my cabin. And he doesn't
like any credit for this, so I won't mention his name. But um,
anyway, yeah, I wound up acquiring that one. And and it's
a great second radio because if in emergency conditions, I can't run the five
thousand, I don't have a generator, So that's a great radio for me
to just reach down and switch it over to a bayou and O backup battery.
And I've got HF and and that bad boy, that little dude can
receive man, I mean it can pull him right out. And I've shot
videos putting it up against the five thousand. Yeah, so it's a great
it's a great trance. I had. I've had, you know, really
high hopes for this seven ten when I saw it introduced, when it was
a rumor, um and um, I was thinking it was gonna wind up
being like a little portable type radio, sort of like a seven h five.
You think Jasus do that, right, It's about time they produce a
radio like that. So anyway, but yeah, let's talk about the seven
ten. That's what we're okay, yep, absolutely, okay, Well you
kind of hinted that this might not be a cheerleader type talk, so we're
just gonna we're gonna be real honest with you. There's I mean, this
radio is gonna work great for a lot of people, but it's good to
compare it to what else is out there too. It's good to have it
having actual factual comparison about what it does and what it doesn't do, because
it's not supposed to be at the same level as the ten, or especially
the one on one or even the five thousand. So exactly, I saw
the results of an independent lab test because you know, I even had viewers
telling me you know, emphatically. Rob Sherwood's not going to tell this.
He's retired, and you know, and I kept thinking, nah, he's
gonna he's gonna test that. Yeah. But but but before that, if
you looked at the numbers from that lab, it looked like it would come
in around twelve plus plus or minus in his list interpolating you know, their
their test versus his. Sure, so I was quite shocked when it came
in, you know, right below the ftd X ten And really they're they're
equal on that on that two killer Hurts dynamic range test, which is the
one he ranks by right. So the reason it's below the FTDX ten is
a couple of the other areas it doesn't do as well with one hundred killer
Hurts spacing UH dynamic range it's a one twenty nine decibel for the tech he's
out there. Um FTDX tens one forty one and FTDX one O one D
is a one forty seven, So that's still not bad by the way.
You know, I think a lot of people know by now, anything on
Rob's list that rates over there in that right column, if it gets up
above ninety, it's good. If it gives above one hundred. I tell
people start picking the radio based upon height, looks, brand loyalty, you
know, yeah, because you're splitting you're splitting hairs there because his test is
run with one set of criteria doesn't take into account all the additional things that
a radio can do with DSP and other filters and things. So because for
example, my five thousand has now slipped down to fifteenth on that list,
but I put it up against the ten all the time, and sometimes one
wind, sometimes the other wins when you kick in all of their other features.
The five thousand has some things at ten and one oh one do not
have has a supernarrow APF function that comes in really handy on CW. So
you got to look at more than just that one criteria, and I think
that people have to. Just Ergonomics is huge. I mean, yes,
the FTDX ten caught some heat over ergonomics. So I'll springboard in into that
because my my most recent video I'm doing a series on this video number nine
is one Unboxed one and I just released video number ten Tuesday, and it's
actually a size comparison, but I you know, I can't help it.
I just pointed out a couple of things, like, you know, the
FTDX ten took a lot of criticism over the crowding of the buttons around the
VFU, right, And I'll agree that there are two of those buttons that
I might hit often that can be annoying, and one is banned and the
other is zen zero in for CW. I don't use it as much because
I can do it by ear, but but the band button is tight between
the function knob and the VFO, the main VFO and then you've got the
outer dial, which that's another thing I miss because I've yeah, I've missed
that on this model too. And I can't tell you how many times I've
used the locked button for that VFO. When you're trying to punch buttons around
that big knob on the FBX ten year out in Poda and you look down,
You're like, how did I get in that frequency? I'm going,
what the hell? What happened? So, yeah, that lot that locknot
that lock button on the ten is is well used on my radio. I
think I said in one of my recent videos, the lock button is your
friend, right, um, And you know, and and again I'm not
gonna get two bent out of shape that because look how much radio they They
essentially crammed half of an FTDX one oh one D into a small box.
Correct, and you you just didn't get extra extra antena connections, and you
didn't get the VC tune preselector, which which is a phenomenal feature. But
yeah, the I would say the ergonomics on the FT seven ten, you
know, or a lot of people are looking at oh wow, they spread
the knobs out, I'm gonna uh if well, when we get to a
picture of one, I'll point something out that I feel about the ergonomics is
a miss. I hate to start off with a negative because there is a
lot of good folks. I'll tell you some of the good as well.
Yeah, for one thing, it's the highest rate did pure sdr in the
world. Now, going by that test that mister Sherwood runs, it even
edges out the K three S which is a hybrid. So you know now
it of course is bested by its big brother, the FTDX ten, and
the FTDX one O one D is still the king of the hill. And
I've pointed this out on my channel just to be fair, because I keep
seeing people say it's fourth it's fourth. It's fourth, and FTDX ten is
third. Technically, if you read footnote why on Rob Sherwood's ranking list,
the sixty seven hundred that's listed his second place is disqualified because that one was
sent to him for that test when he went out and tested production models,
various models. Even the able r L tested some ninety nine decibels lower than
the FTDX five thousand, which is a ten two thousand, ninety sign So
that I don't know why Rob leaves that there, because it does lead to
some confusion, and it really doesn't matter, I guess when you when you
when you take into account that anything in the top ten's great, but true,
that makes it not in the top ten. And uh, you know,
and for those who are saying, well, I want to you know,
bragging rights. You know, I've got the greatest receiver in the world
or the second greatest receiver in the world, excuse it a little bit.
But that said, the seven ten is now the highest ranking pure SDR there
is, and I kind of expected Yasue would be capable of doing that.
I mean, think of it this way. They've they've been back with their
arms crossed checking out what everybody else is doing, and they had the opportunity
to perfect it. Now. True, I would expect ICM is not going
to be too far behind with an update. You know. You know,
people like to compare and when the when the ten came out, this happened
a lot, and when the seven ten came out, this sappen a lot
too. We always we always thought that the seven ten was an odd model
number to have. But that's I don't want to get off in that rabbit
hole. But um, you know, we talked about the fact that everything
gets compared to the seventy three hundred. Yeah, every everything gets compared to
the seven. Oh, it's just going to be a seventy three. My
friend calls it the people's radio because well be sold right right exactly. Yeah,
because the seventy three hundred when it came out was was was very popular.
It still is very popular. Yeah, it became a lot more popular
a few years after I was there at Dayton. The year it came out,
they sold for fourteen ninety nine and all of the high icon went to
all of the retailers. Because one of the retailers told me this, I'm
not going to say who. They said, please don't discount this. We
want to make it fair for everybody. And the retailers were like, okay,
cool, we're not going to discount it, which means they make more
money because they're not given discounts. Right. So, but nobody went home.
No retailers went home with the seventy three hundred that weekend, so all
of them were sold. Well, that was back when they were selling for
fourteen ninety nine when they did Beauty at Daton. You know, fast forward
three or four years later and on Black Friday eight before the pandemic, it
was Black Friday twenty nineteen. That radio was like eight ninety. Yeah,
I've seen him under under a grand I tell my viewers this, if you're
just gonna come home and relax in your easy chair and your shack and you're
gonna rag you with the fellows on forty or eighty or you're seventy five,
man, that that's seventy three hundreds all the radio you will ever need.
It's intuitive. It's a great radio for I know this is not a seventy
three hundred video, but it's a great radio for somebody who's new because it
kind of leads you along. It even comes out of the box with good
audio with a Yeasue. I had one of my viewers the other day,
and I think, I think I agree with him. I do agree.
He said, A Yasu's a thinking man's radio. You gotta dig into the
manual more. You gotta, because it's gonna come. It's got two parametric
eques in it, three bands each. Okay, it's not just a simple
base in trouble, you can really tailor that audio. But it comes out
of the box with none of those configured. And in fact, the mikey
Q is not even enabled, so you're you're on your own with the Yasue.
You got to really dig into the manual, which that sort of led
to my channel because I could not find videos that were showing me the things
I wanted to see. I would see videos people just put two radios next
to each other and turn knobs and and I'm sitting there, going, yeah,
change that filter right, D and you know, and so I just
said, okay, you know what, once I do choose a radio,
I'm gonna start some some videos about it. Of course, that was the
five thousand and then it's springboarded into hight ninety one. But yeah, you
know, it's not that I do not work for you, a Sue.
I shoot straight, I tell the good to bad and the ugly. The
ftd X ten. I did some nitpick videos. Um, it's not a
perfect radio. There are some things that I would definitely improve if ye Sue
would listen. I told them May of twenty twenty one. None of it's
been implemented, but it's still really really cops. And that's what pains me
is when somebody can make something that good and get that close to perfection and
miss out on something. For an example, I can use my mouse to
configure the menus, but I got to press a button to get into the
menus. I can I can't write click. You know. I can use
a mouse to change modes, but I can't use a mouse to change band.
Therefore, I'm forced to press my finger between the VFO and the and
the function knob. So a little little nip and a tuck here things that
could be done in firmware, and it could be the perfect radio. But
I'll tell you this. I mean, if there is no FTDX ten,
that FT seven ten then becomes a really great radio. But when you put
it up against its big brother. There are there are some failings, and
I'm going to be unfolding that in the series on my channel. Okay,
but now we were going to talk about the size because I don't know about
you, but I've had that question asked yes so many times, and you
know, sometimes I chuckle and go, well, you can do what I
did. You can go to the manuals and look it up. But I
do have if you if you want me to switch over, I've got the
two one sitting on top of the other. I've got another camera here.
See if I can do this. So we're nine point four wide with the
TENT seven ten ten and a half wide with the FTDX ten. We're three
point one inch tall with the seven ten, with three point six with the
FT d X ten, and then we're nine point seven inches deep with the
FT seven ten and we're ten point four d with the ftd X ten.
So you know, it is definitely a noticeable difference in size. And yeah,
one would probably reason that a FT seven ten would be a great portable
radio. Now, in my opinion, you'd want to you'd want to unhook
that SP forty speaker and use headphones and uh, and I guess if you
want to, we can springboard right into what is AESS. So we're talking
about the spty YEA one of the so so I had John a little preface
because I don't know if you saw this on my video, but I had
drawn on on a live stream when I first got this one. That's it
next to me, and he explained what AESS was. I'd like to hear
your take on it. But the question, the most common question in the
comments and in the comments after people could put in the comments after the h
the live comments and the post comments, is that they were less interested in
the radio having the AESS since it didn't work. It wouldn't work over headphones.
So that seems to be that seemed to be a pretty common common lead.
Well, it can't work over headphones. I work. I work in
the audio industry now, I've been doing it for quite a while. As
another another, I have too many hats to wear, right, I mean
literally, I was a bass player in the recording session night before last.
I do all kinds of stuff nice, So, um, what you've got
there? In terms, it's been around for in the music industry for many,
many years. A large public address systems have this. Everybody talks about
subwoffers. Yeah, well, the sub whoffer usually sitting on the floor.
If somebody knows what they're doing when they install it, it needs a couple
to the floor, the subwoffer. There's something called a crossover. You don't
want to send the high frequencies to your subwoffer. Some of the subwoffers will
cross what we call crossover at one hundred and twenty hurts. Some are designed
to crossover eighty hurts. So you're literally filtering out all the high frequencies,
sending them to the big speakers that are hanging somewhere, and you're putting the
lower frequencies into that subwoffer. So what Yasu has done here is a similar
concept. And so a couple of the controls on this now the menu.
But the menu system on this thing is so much like the FTDX ten.
And that's good because somebody who's already got an FTDX ten, see I have.
One of my viewers has made a great point. He bought two FTDX
tens, one for home, one for Poda, and he said, because
I don't have to relearn a radio when I go out in the field,
I know my way around it, and I agree, and the seven ten
is enough like the FTDX ten that you'll be able to do do that because
they share so many I'll tell you this, here's a flaw. They share
a flaw. Many people notice that the RF game knob on the FTDX ten
when you rotate it sounds like a dirty potentiometer. But those are encoders,
so it can't be the R the FT seven ten has inherited that well as
well. If you rotate your RF gain knob, you'll hear us a scratchy
sound. Um, so you know they're very You can tell they're using very,
very much the same firmware, just tweaked, nipped and touch. But
um so anyway, that is a difference. But other than that, the
screen is is practically identical to the FT d X ten and uh and god,
by the way, I guess it goes without saying. If we look
at the radio now you it's very obvious Yasu didn't listen to all of the
uh belly aching. That's how we say it here in Georgia. UH no
backlit buttons, you know, right. I think that's a missed opportunity on
the ftd X ten and I think it's well, they didn't have an excuse
on the seven tenth, but uh, you know, but they did not
give that to you. Notice that glow there around the VFO that is kind
of interesting. It's blue if you're on VFOA, it's green. If you're
on VFO B, it's white. If you're I haven't noticed that it changed
colors, well it will if if you if you toggle over to VFO B.
Let me do that now. I'm doing that on mine right now.
And yes, I mean you're you're you're right of obviously, but yeah,
it'll go to green. For VFO B, it'll go to white if you're
using memory mode, which I use memory tune all the time with my rig
Man. The memory tune is a godsend With an FT eight ninety one,
I run one mobile and I hardly ever have to look at it. Yeah.
Um, but and then it goes red if you are like working split
or using the clarifier. Ah, that's got four different color schemes and it's
and the menu you can actually change the color scheme. But now back to
the d NF thing, I should mention. So there's a there's some distortion
that's introduced in there with strong signals. On the FTDX ten, I reported
at the Yasue way over a year ago, the FT seven ten. This
is a you remember, it's choosing an NXP Semiconductor's DS peach up. Now,
why Yasue broke with the TI thing because it worked so well in the
FTDX ten. Except DNF this one does not have as much distortion. In
fact, you have to you have to nitpick it to hear it. But
there, I mean, there is some in there, but if you didn't
turn it off to compare it, you might not notice it. It's very
very minor. And you know, let's let's face it, things like DNF
noise blanker, they're all the ways that compromise. You really want to deal
with the issue. You want to cut the coacts of the guy that's tuning,
just kidding, just kidding, um, you know, you want to
call the power company to get rid of the powerline noise. So those are
stop gap measures. And that's why if I'm choosing a radio that's not going
to be the thing that makes me go nap, I won't buy that radio.
So in all fairness, but other than that, those screens are about
the same. Now this ae SS system that stands for Acoustic Enhancement Speaker System,
and what they've done back to our my music industry roots here, the
crossover is going to decide which frequencies go where into what speaker. So I
should point this out. Low frequencies are omnidirectional, so you can hear low
frequency like a subwayfer could be anywhere in the room you don't even know where.
But higher frequencies are directional. And so that's why in a big PA
system, the loudspeakers, you know, they're going to point the they want
to make sure that the higher frequency speakers, which usually look like a horn
tweeters, you know, are pointed at in the direction of the audience.
So what JESU has done is they're putting the high frequencies out on the sp
forty this ode on the side of the radio. They're sending lower frequencies to
the internal speaker, and it's selectable the other opts. Now, the setting
I have it on right now is to adjust the balance how much of the
internal speaker do you want to hear versus the external speaker. And I've actually
found that nine works for me seventy five eighty five is good too, but
ninety percent beef sit up a little bit, gives you a little bit more
because this is a small radio. Yeah, so those who are I've got
a video coming up for the people who are going, well, yeah,
but how does it sound compared to the SP thirty. Well, stay tuned.
It's gonna be in my next week's video. I'm releasing videos every Tuesday
about this rig. Okay, I'm not sure when this one will release yet.
So you check the playlist? Do you have all those in a playlist?
Dug, Yes, everything's in a playlist. There's an FT seventeen,
you know. And I admit you go on YouTube as a you know,
you and I will. We'll see it a different view because the studio whatever.
But you go in there as a viewer and the playlist get a little
bit lost in a shuffle over there on that sidebar to me, Yeah,
you see one, you gotta click more. I got it. I got
over fifty playlists, yeah, Sam, Sam here broken down into each subject.
And I even had a guy while back. You think you could put
these in different folders and based on the Yeah, they're called playlists. So
the other option there for aess is to pick what's what you might call the
cutoff frequency or the crossover frequency. YESU gave his two choices, seven hundred
hurts and one thousand hurts. So what you're saying there is which range of
frequencies do I want to come out of the internal speaker because that's more omnidirectional
um. And so you can say seven hundred hurts and down, which is
a default, or you can do one thousand hurts and down, which actually
I tinkered with that a little bit last night. I actually I've been doing
some CW with the rig and and last night at work Croatia, I got
a five eight with one hundred watts into my z S six BKWUM. But
the U and I, to me, I was just tweaking around with that,
and I felt like he sounded better with it at ninety percent. And
now I listened to a few other people said, yeah, that's a little
more full, you know for a little bit speaker system. That does help,
but you know it is it gimmicky. Yeah, I'm probably a little
bit, but it does work. And so I found that a thousand sending
a thousand hurts and down into the internal speaker rather than seven hundred hurts and
down from my ear. See, this is the thing that's great about having
all these controls for receive audio. For example, the FT seven d X
ten introduced a three band DQ for receive. You don't see that on a
lot of radios. Literally a base, mids and trouble for receive. It's
one of the very first settings I do. I did it in the unboxing
video for this rig, and I did it for the ten. So I
get viewers who go, man, I have a hard time hearing certain frequency
ranges. Man, you can tailor that all over the place. And I'll
tell you what I did last night too, is I unplugged the SP forty
just to see what will it sound like with the internal speaker with it set
on one thousand hurts. Now, as you might guess, you don't get
as much of the shrill highs, but also you don't get all that noise
that comes in at those higher frequencies. So it's a trade off there,
but it will work with just the internal speaker. I don't know about the
impedance values. I haven't looked at a schematic yet whether whether YAC might say,
well it's not good to run it on an internal speaker, but usually
you get lower impedance when you hook two speakers in parallel. So I'm trusting
that that's okay. But I recommend people that are going to operate portable we're
headphones, plug it into the front. You'll get full range and be done
with it. Now. One other little thing about the ESS. I found
that putting the speaker on the right hand side, because the internal speakers on
the left hand side, by the way, putting the external speaker on the
right hand side, because they allow you to do it either way. You
just kind of slide it over these two screws and lock it in place.
It's you get a little bit more separate. Yeah, your picture is better
there go Yeah. Oh see that right up there on the top you can
see the internal speaker. Yeah, right here, yep. So by having
the sp forty over there on the right, you're gonna get more separation and
you're gonna hear I forget if it was a sue marketing paperwork, somebody's described
it as more of a three D sound if anything, I would say surround
sound, but surround sound. Yeah, yeah, you're gonna hear that difference
more so with the speaker on the right. If you put the speaker over
on the left when you plug up, you're gonna usd card slots over on
the left. But also you're gonna have those speakers so close together you won't
be able to hear as much of that separation. So that's the AESS system.
Is it a little bit of a trickery? Yeah, probably so.
And the people who say, well, I would have bought the radio that
had forced an external speaker on me. I did a poll among my Patreon
team, and overwhelmingly people use headphones and external speakers. It was like six
percent use the internal speaker of a radio. So you're gonna have an external
speaker anyway, or you're gonna use headphones. And so I guess in a
sense, you know, it's okay that it comes with a speaker, but
if you're gonna take it portable, yeah, you probably won't use it.
And I should say this to you. We're talking about the pricing when the
seventy three hundred came out. Wow, this is a lot of people don't
realize this, but they don't make much profit on the radios now, it's
minimal. I don't know if you've been told that too, but yes I
have. Um, that's why, that's why a speaker inside of a metal
box is one hundred and seventy dollars. You know, they make their money
off the accessories that they hope you're going to buy that desk, mike and
the external speaker, the radios. They're just bare bones on the pricing there,
so I don't get too concerned. I've had people gripe about the price
of this, and then I go back and look at my nineteen fifty nine
CQ magazine. On the back flat there's a there's a Drake for five hundred
nine dollars and there's a Collins for twelve hundred dollars. So I think we're
doing pretty well these days. Price wise. You get a lots good point
or for your money. You know, with the modern transceivers. So I
talked about the DNFUM no backlit buttons, RF gain still has the scratchy sound.
I've got a little note card here, so uh yeah, if you
in no cwdcoder. But let's do this. Let's talk about the economics a
bit, because that was a huge deal with people like oh yeah, look
Finally they spread the knobs out. Well, I want to draw your attentions
to something. The knobs that you see there, none of them have a
ring, and in fact, you don't have the you don't you don't have
that, Yeah, and you don't have that outer dial for the VFO.
Yeah, there's no Yeah, there's no outer dial ring here either. So
for me, I use the CS button, the custom switch button, and
I permanently assigned the outer dial to be the level for the scope sensitivity on
mine, and I'm missing that because I'm now having to use the function knob
that for that well, for the function NAB. I usually if I'm in
SIDEBAN, I use it for power. If I'm in CW, I use
it for CW speed because you know, I'm working different people at different speeds
and I want to quickly reach up there and change CW speed. So I'm
yeah, things are more spread out, but I find myself having to go
to menus more often. So top right there, that's the RF gain and
the bottom right is AF gain is audio frequency gain listen volume volume right.
So, um, I think that that was a missed opportunity there, because
that's a lot of real estate for just those two knobs with only those two
functions because on an FTDX ten those are down to the lower left of the
VFO, which people you know hated on. But and I agree, you
know, we do like a volume knob on their lower right. Just people
tend to be that way unless they're left handed. Unless they're left handed.
True, but you had the RF gain and the audio frequency gain, the
volume all on one shaft there right, so it took up very little space.
Now you got all that real estate over there on the right hand side,
that is, um just for two funks two. It's really all that
over there to the right of the VFO is just to replace one spot that
was on the FTDX ten. Well, here's my issue with that. On
the FTDX ten, the out up in the bot top right was bandwidth and
shift. Grab a knob and the automatically you're controlling, no menu selection,
nothing, You're it's right there at your fingertips. The bottom right was your
contour, your APF, you know, or whichever one you selected to use.
You know, typically on CW it's APF and sideband its contour, and
those are unique. Some radios don't from other brands, don't always have that.
Some do, but um, and then also your manual notch knob.
You need a manual notch. That's why I didn't. It doesn't bother me
about the DNF having distortion. I quickly just rotate a knob and it automatically
engages the manual notch. You don't have to turn it on with or not
button. There is one, but you don't have to. And then I
quickly just a zero and I shot a video recently showing how to use the
band pass scope that little display up in the top right to see the spike
of a of a head or nine and then quickly move that deep V or
the manual notch over there. I always going to the menu system and set
the manual notch to its most narrow setting and ap as well. So again
at your fingertips. And so now how do we get to all of that?
We have to press that button down there to the lower left, which
is if you just start rotating and it changes frequency in five killer hurtsch increments
if you now, if you're in memory mode, it cycles through the memory
frequency what you have stored in memory, which yesue a lot of people don't
know this, but YESU put sixty meters in there for you in the memories
there in memory bank five Memory zero one is yours. But they actually do
have a sample frequency in there. It's always seven megaherts. But then you
can load it all up. I like to go in order of one sixty
from one sixty meters. I'll put my favorite CWS side band AM all the
way up with every band so that NOB will also cycle through memories if you're
in memory mode, and then if you press it, it brings up DSP,
so now you have to then you have to rotate it to what do
you want to adjust in DSP, and then once you select what you want
to adjust, you got to press it again. And then once you press
it, you'll see it blink and then you can make a change, and
if you make a change, it'll go from gray to that amberish yellowish.
So you got a lot of steps there to get to nut things that I
used to just reach for a knob for. So okay, yeah, orgonomically
it's more spread out yet, and you're gonna be hitting them in you more
often because of that. So you know, it's always the good with the
bad. And then I mean, you gotta you gotta you gotta take some
some you know, improvements, and then you got some things that are to
me not as well thought out, because what I would have liked to seen
is gained gained knobs again, bottom right be a F and RF game and
the top right be width and shift, just like it wasn't on an FTDX
ten. Talk about leaving your shat and going out on a PoTA site with
the FT seven ten. That makes it even more so. You're gonna naturally
want to reach up there to the top right to adjust width and shift.
And it's in the same place if they had done that with this rig.
So I put it this way. I see pluses and minuses with the ergonomics.
Some people are gonna say, well, I like it more spread out
like it is. Here's another little funny thing, the band button. See
where it is up there to the top right of the VFO. Yeah,
I'm used to it being over here exactly now. Granted it was crowded.
I gotta be honest with you. I got used to the FTDX ten.
I operate the thing no problem. But now to cycle through the band stacks,
you gotta tap band and then tap function or tap or tap the band
button there, but you can also press function in and it'll cycle through the
band stacks. You know, each band has three. Think of them as
quick access, you know, like you can have a favorite CW frequency in
there, sideband frequency and AM and now you got to spread out to do
that. Now. I have the early firmware from my FTDX ten, which
I don't know why they changed it. I requested them to put it back.
Numerous viewers of mine have requested. And you just double tap band and
you cycle through the band stack. Tap tap, next band stack, tap
tap. Um. That was version zero one, zero four, the FTDX
ten after that, it's the same thing, but the band button was of
course closer to the function knob with the FTDX ten, so pluses and minuses
ergonomically. Um. But now can the radio here? Yeah? It hears
very well. Um, it does. I believe Rob's numbers are being being
proven to me as I chase week signals. I've already used it on CWUM
and you know last night work the Croatian station. Um. I'll say this
though, and this will be in one of my upcoming videos. I'll give
a teaser. It's got a strange annoying popping sound coming from that speaker every
time when you're sending CW. It's not the relay. You know, people
go, oh, I hate radio with relays. Well that's a whole another
topic. Pen dios versus relay. There are pluses and minuses to each,
but um, you could put it on semi break in, so you've got
to I use a five hundred millisecond delay, so the relay is only going
to click once and I'll send and then it'll let go when I'm done half
a second after I'm done. It's not that relay. It's a it's an
audio sound coming from the SP forty and it's like a after every ditting dog.
Yeah, it was so annoying to me, and it screwed me up
a couple of times sending CW because I wasn't you know, you need that
feedback of yourself to make sure you're you know, you gotta. You don't
want to sound like you don't have a good fist, as they say.
So that's a little something. Now, all of my nitpicks I'm hoping can
be addressed in a firmware update. Um, it is a different DSP chip,
So is that dspa chip even capable if they do a firmware update.
That remains to be seen. My next video is coming out Tuesday. I'm
going to get into digital noise reduction. I won't. I won't do it
here because I want that to be a surprise. And there is a surprise
related to the digital noise reduction. See. I know people hate digital noise
reduction, but for me, I can't operate without it. Now I'm spoiled.
I mean, I like, I like sideband to sound like I'm talking
on a repeater. But the key to that is a lot of people miss
out on this. They dump everything from the front end of the receiver end
of the DSP and say, all right, now I clean it up.
No, no, no, I teach it all the time on my channel.
Deal with the noise in the front end. Work that esimeter to the
left, not to the right, IPO attenuation or f gain, minimize how
much noise you're sending to the DSP, and it will do a fabulous job
for you. But another weird thing, there's are quirk in Yasu radios and
those who don't know this yet, You've got big viewerships, so maybe we
can get the word out on FT eight ninety one. They use the same
chip, by the way as the ten and the one oh one UM,
but the algorithms are different, and I don't I don't know if it's a
memory limit why Yasuo hasn't gone back and upgraded those. Forget algorithms one through
eight on the digital noise reduction start at nine, because one through eight's gonna
sound like you're listening underwater. Nine doesn't do that. Nine You may hear
a little bit of an echo effect, but what you're hearing there is your
AGC tale. In other words, it's cleaned up so much noise. You
can now hear the AGC tapering off, whereas before it was there but you
couldn't hear because of the noise. So on eight you want to do you
want to run it at algorithm nine or higher, but that's gonna doll out
the highs. Only run it nine if you don't go higher than nine unless
you need to. So the ten comes out and the DSP on it.
The DNR rivaled my five thousand because my five thousand never makes that underwater sound.
Doesn't matter if I'm an algorithm one or fifteen, and when the ten
came out, it just shocked me. Same chip, same chip, the
one on one even had the watery sound. And that's why one of the
reasons I chose the five thousand, many other reasons too. Nab I said,
Wow, they they they've got it, they've rived. They're rival in
the five thousand with this one. And now later and later update made the
one oh one, I'll equal the ten. So I'm told, Okay,
I've never had my hands on a one oh one since the ones that I
tested to make my buying decision, so I don't haven't tried one since that
update. But uh yeah, I mean now that, as I'll point out
in the video this coming up next Tuesday, you know, the digital noise
reduction in the in the seven ten is definitely different because you got a different
chip, and um, they're you know, they're the differences are pretty noticeable.
Yeah, so did we cover I think we covered about everything, didn't
I think that's a yeah. Yeah, I was actually maybe a little bit
more than than we talked about. But but which is good. I mean,
it's all really good information. So yeah, great, Okay, Well,
hey, so, so to be clear, I'm not hating on the
seven ten. I think it's a great radio. It's good to be honest
with. And you know, it's not supposed to be an ft d X
ten competitor. Why would Yasu make radio that competes with an existing radio,
an existing radio that's the only released like two years ago, right, So
it's not supposed to be an FTDX ten competitor. It's supposed to be an
FTDX ten in a smaller box with less features, with the lower price tag.
And someone said, well, they're only one hundred dollars within one hundred
hundred and fifty dollars or one another. Yes, but the seven ten comes
with the speaker, and you can say, well, I don't use the
speaker. Well it comes with it, so you can. I don't know
if maybe you can sell it or if you can just use it when you're
home in the shack, if you're using it for a portable radio. I'm
totally with you on that. I wouldn't think I want to take it much.
I mean, I find table maybe yeah, and see, and that's
typically what I do with PODA, and I find I don't use I've got
a Higle Pro seven for a that's got a that's got a Yazu plug.
I bought that to use with my Flex radio Mastro, which just the same
plug, so it'll I can use it on my my Yaizu or my Flex
radios. I don't use that when I go to hold up because usually I'm
making a video and if I put headphones on the video, can't hear the
audio come from the radio. Yep. So I'm like, you know,
now, not everybody is doing that, Not everybody's making YouTube videos like I
am. But yeah, I mean, I mean when I was on field
Day, Yeah, I'm plugging in my Pro seven headset. Absolutely, it's
just it's night and day. But between the signals you can hear whether they're
whether they're a loud signals or whether they're in the noise signals. You can
definitely hearing better without all the people talking around you and the we do field
Day in a big group. So but that speaker is going to be at
least it's there if you want it as an option in this package. So
but you if you don't want it and you want a little bit more radio,
choose the choose the FDD Extent package. So field Day you bring that
up. That's a great, great point to be able to make a point
in Rob Sherwood's test, the one one hundred killer hurts number that he's got
in there, the one twenty nine decibel though on a field day situation,
that's the number that would you know, because you gotta have multiple operators around,
multiple in ten is that number would come into play there because you're got
to people on other bands. You're gonna have people up and down a band.
Maybe you're working CW A forty meters, somebody else's up working sideband.
That's where that number will come into play. And in that scenario, the
FTDX ten wins. But they are neck to neck, I mean you know,
they really are their neck to net on the received side itself, sensitivity
and all those aspects of it, and and it is, I mean it
is number wise, it is the best SDR pure SDR made. I have
a theory as far as why did you see because I've had so many people
I don't know if you have, but they asked me why did they do
this? Why they bring out a radio so similar? Yeah? Yeah,
and when they should have and this is what they say, and when they
should have brought out something like two seven h five. Yes, and my
theory isn't then I'll probably be told them wrong. I'm sure, probably I
am. But my theory is they needed their me Too Radio because you know,
well, you don't have a pure SDR. You came out with a
thing called a hybrid. Yeah, we'll at hybrids number one in the world,
but you don't have a pure SDR. You know, the same thing
as being said to ken Wood. I mean, like ken when you're gonna
come out with us SDR. I mean, it's sad about ken Wood.
They're hardly doing anything, looks like but um, you know, yeah.
My theory is is that it was like, okay, fine, we'll show
you that we can make an SDR. And oh, by the way,
ours is now the best SDR ever made based on that that ranking. But
that's just a theory. Yeah, I mean it makes sense. You have
sense and you Hey, I'm sure Jasu watches your videos because you're all over
the world. Yea, sue, we need a seven oh five competitor.
They well, I say they know that, but um, yas Usa knows
that we put it that way. Yeah, Jaz Japan, I don't know.
Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but yeah, you know,
what I mean, if you if you think about it, the eight one
seven in A one eight were the predecessor to the seven oh five. Now
those radios are night and day. I mean, oh, they don't even
have they don't have DSP no, and they don't come with a c W
filter. No, they don't have a they don't have a lot of and
they're big and heavy and vulky, but they're but they're in all mode HF
portable QRP radio with its own battery. Since the pandemic started, Yezu's released
like five this This is either radio number five or number six since the pandemic
started. Yeah, Kinwood, Kinwood is gone. They're not gone. They're
coming back. I've I've got good inside information that Kinwood's coming back. Kinwood
had a bunch of Elmar contracts they had to focus on. Well, I
hope they do. I hope they do. Yeah. Because of chip shortages
and supply chain issues and that that that's facing everybody. Icon has released one,
one or two new radios since the pandemic start. I think the seven
oh five actually released in twenty twenty. Uh, it might have been twenty
nineteen. I can't remember if it released before or after the pandemic. I
think it might have been twenty nineteen. It might have been twenty nineteen,
might have been right before everything shut down. When I was at the Huntsville
Handfest last August, it was two months ago. Uh yeah, two months
ago. At the time of this recording, the Gigapart store had the IC
seventy three hundred for almost for like fourteen hundred dollars. Yeah, And I'm
like, and all of the all of the icon stuff, the prices were
like this. Yeah. And if you look at the ftd X ten,
which came out after the pandemic or during the pandemic, I should say,
yeah, it was sixteen ninety nine and now you can get it for about
thirteen. It's well, right now it's back up to fourteen. But at
that handfest, one of the dealers I won't say who had it for thirteen
twenty nine ninety five, and another one had it for twelve ninety nine ninety
five. Okay, that is an unbelievable prize. I mean that's the price
at the seven ten, and I mean the ftd X ten is a Yeah.
If I gotta pick between the two, I'm gonna get a ten.
Oh. Yeah. But now my prediction is, I don't think the ten.
People have asked you think the ten's gonna go back to seventeen hundred dollars.
I mean, honestly, I gotta tell you, when it came out
at seventeen dollars, I said, this is a game changer, because I
mean the three thousand D was still at that point eighteen hundred dollars. And
I said, well, this is going to kill the three thousand D.
And that happened to three months later. Yeah, and that's still a man.
The three thousand D is a great radio. I mean it is.
Yeah, it's still it's still a great radio, and it can use mutuning
preselectors like the five thousand KEN, so you have that front end preselector that's
variable like you do on the one oh one D and MP. Even now,
when you think about the price of a Collins radio in fifty nine at
twelve hundred, we're being we're buying some incredible technology even at seventeen hundred.
But I don't My prediction is, I don't think they'll put it back there.
I think it's going to settle out at either where it is right now,
fourteen ninety five or maybe fifteen ninety nine ninety five. That's just my
gut feel. Yeah, you know, you just look at look at the
history of these radios that you do usually settle somewhere, Yes, you know,
and I'm sure the seven ten will settle somewhere. I don't. I
don't know that except maybe on a Black Friday if it'll get below a thousand.
But it's possible. Yeah, I mean, it is possible because let's
just face it, whether you like it or not, it is going head
to head with the seventy three hundred. It is. Yeah, totally,
it totally is. And and I just I just I think Yazy's got something
cooking for the whole QRP thing. I do hope. So because you know,
I haul an FT eight ninety one up the mountains, I'm I'm I'm
mountain goat and a half now on soda, and oh I've carried a five
pound eight ninety one up because it spoiled me. Man. Even on CW,
that thing is the boss because it does have a physical roofing filter.
Even though it's only a three K, he doesn't go down to five hundred.
But the DSP is just that good. Yeah. My friend Joel was
saw me work. He was taking a break. He does CW and I
was up there on a mountain and he walked over there and I gave a
guy five to nine nine. He's looking at the meter. It wasn't it
was barely wiggling, and said, well, he sounded like five nine nine
to me. Because we also use a radio called an L in our precision
Mountaintopper and they don't have an AS meter, so we always make it up.
You know, we go a little bit of white noise five to seven,
you know, a little more white, and always five five, got
a little grind in there, five three, you know, nine five three
five nine. So um. You know, these kind of radios with the
with the with the DSP we have available to us today, you can make
a five two nine sound like a five nine nine and um. And that
spoil that has spoiled me, absolutely, it really really has. But yeah,
I mean I do carry the seven ounce radio a little more often now,
the little the little mountaintopper, but you know you're restricted then to CW
only. Yeah, but I've got I've got my eye on that that four
br or whatever it is. As soon as they've been watching their website for
when they they're supposed to come back. They're supposed to put some more on
their website sometime this month. So well, and that's another American made radio,
right, Yes it is California, Yes it is. Yeah, and
they yeah they. I used to have a the LD eleven, which was
their sideband NCW version. I remember that when an equipmaking it right. I
wish I wouldn't have sold that thing. That was a great radio. I
don't remember why I sold it. I think I sold to buy something else.
I did a poll among my patreons. I said, have you ever
sold a radio? And later regretted it, and the majority said yes,
yeah, yeah, yeah. The majority did say yes, because you know,
just to be just to be upfront with your viewers. Not everything that's
new is necessarily better. No. I mean, I've got an old radio
over here. It was made in nineteen ninety one, and I was running
at mobile. Joel, my friend Joel heard it and he had just gotten
out of his jeep or something with a different one of the modern radios.
He goes Man's Compared to mind, it sounds like he took a blanket off
the speaker. I mean, you know, then again, remember a mobile
radio back in nineteen ninety one was still big and it was about the size
of an ftd X ten really, and so but you know some of the
old radios, man, they have they have some Well I can tell you
this. The noise blanker on that radio best I've ever I'll tell you what
it is, and says FT eight ninety eight. It has an Antena tuner.
Ye with a ten meter hamstick, I can work ten, twelve,
fifteen, seventeen, and twenty. But the noise blanker in that thing knocks
out my ignition pulses, and I never know its own no distortion. So
newer is not always better. It may be better for the manufactor because they
can pack a little more into an IC chip and it costs less, but
it may not always be better. And we have to be smart shoppers in
that respect. And that's one of the things I try to give my viewers
is that type of insight, like don't buy six hundred dollars microphone and plug
it into a y so you've got two three band parametric eqs built into the
rig more than enough EQ. So, for example, on this radio,
the seven ten and the d X ten. You can set up the microphone
EQ for the hand mike and then immediately turn around and plug in an M
seventy or an m D one hundred. It'll sound just as good, you
know, because they're very similar sounding, and those are not even I mean
with M seventies, I think one hundred and forty five maybe one hundred and
fifty dollars. You don't need to buy that five and six hundred dollars microphone
for these radios, just totally unnecessary. You think about what you could do
with that extra month. You could buy an antenna. Yeah, I mean
you can buy a good off Center fed dipole. True, yeah, uh
huh, that is true. Well, hey, Jason is great getting together?
Yeah again man, Yeah, yeah, you two. Man. I
appreciate you taking the time out this morning. And uh I want yeah,
I gotta, I gotta box this up and send it to Peter, the
guy who won this radio. So I wanted to get this done before before
I congratulating my hands. Congratulations Peter. And look, you know, out
of the gate, I checked the firmware versions zero zero, so so you
know, hopefully it's going to get better from here. With a little nip
in the tuck here and there in the firmware. Yeah, totally, Doug,
thank you for for the time today. I appreciate it. And uh,
well, we'll catch him next time and you guys go check um the
Dougs. I'll put a link in the description blow to Duck's channel, but
also his playlist for this specific radio that he has eight or nine videos on
and he's adding too as time goes on. So yeah, my viewers asked
me not to clutter my whole channel with FT seven ten, so I'm only
releasing one video a week on Tuesdays at noon. Yeah that's good, that's
good. Thank you man, Jason have a great one, man. Yeah,
thanks you too. Bye bye