Thanks for the good answer Chuck, yes it is a touchy subject and hard to get a good answer here sometimes. Maybe in the future I will do it. Thanks again, Jim
We hams as a society are peculiarly self-selected type of people. Nerdy, deferring to authority, traditionalist, usually older, usually male and almost always cranky... The days of "ham" meaning a spoofy liddish sparky willing to be dodgy with authority are long gone. There are virtues to such a culture, but nitpickiness, jealous and evasive elitism, and stodginess are facets which we could bear some improvement on the average.
Personally, I think it was a great question and not at all warrants being touchy. It looks pretty straightforward a process. Ive not done such on an FT-60, but on other ht's i can say getting the things open can be a real bummer.
Whether opening tx width is experimentalism or not is irrelevant. If we wanted to only buy closed, opaque appliances, what's the point in getting a ham license? There are plenty of decent reasons to mod thus your HT. To whit:
The provision for hams to be able to tx on any freq and power if needed in an emergency is no stale relic, but should be a backbone rail of ham radio as a citizen emergency service. If anything, ALL hams should mars mod their rigs for this reason alone.
Those of us in remote areas are relieved to have this option, should we be in an area without cell service and encounter life threatening situations. I'm sure glad there are rural PD/FD repeaters not on any digital trunk, let me tell you. Likewise, if a MURS or GMRS using backpack buddy gets lost, we bloody well shouldn't whinge about the regs if we need to crank up 5w through a yagi to QSO and find them.
Finally there is the basic ethic of freedom in the thing to consider and not appologise for, at least for those of us who give a fig about that in an increasingly authoritarian era. It's well and good for spectrum to be well managed and abusers punished. But fat finger accidents aside, it's another thing entirely to start relieving ourselves of responsibility for good practice by technological handicaps. This kind of social engineering is not one which those of us with a libertarian concern should abide. If you'll forgive a reaching analogy, radio capability is much like the second amendment in arming a citizen.
So, Jim, open them up, including cell band receive, and pray you never have to go out of band. Bless you for it!
73 de Brighid