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Reviews For: Yaesu FT-2000/2000D

Category: Transceivers: HF Amateur HF+6M+VHF+UHF models - non QRP <5W

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Review Summary For : Yaesu FT-2000/2000D
Reviews: 204MSRP: 2.995
Description:
HF/VHF-Transceiver (160 - 6 m) with 100 Watt output or 200 Watt with external power supply. Successor of the very popular FT-1000MP (Mark-V/Field). RF and LF scope. High dynamic range front end. 6 KHz and 12 KHz Roofing Filters. IF-DSP. Sub receiver.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.yaesu.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
002044.4
W1GRM Rating: 2008-03-13
GREAT Time Owned: more than 12 months.
There has been much talk of the FT-2000. I'm writing this after a year of owning one. The Radio has been flawless if you have installed all the updates. I would purchase another one in a second.
KI4EKN Rating: 2008-03-07
Hard To Set Up. Not! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
The choice was between the FT-2000 and the IC-756ProIII. After doing the research, reading the reviews and investigating the user groups, it looked like the clear winner for what I wanted was the FT-2000. For a quick and easy setup, check out HA2SN's file on menu settings in the Fox Tango user group @ yahoo. For hints on getting good TX audio, go to http://www.la5mda.no/soundgood.html Yes, it is more complicated than my TS-930's, but so much more refined. Now, I need to sell/store one of my 930's. Tough choice.
OH1LA Rating: 2008-03-04
5/5 Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I am happy with this radio. I don't say any more! FT-2000 is winner!
73 de Pekka, OH1LA DXCC HONOR ROLL
P.S also member of EHSC
F4DTO Rating: 2008-03-03
The must Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
FT-2000 really has a magnificent quality of listening, with the postal area 2000, filters are successful.
Very silent ventilator mêm during intense traffique.
That furthermore, I do not absolutely regret my purchase
AA9NN Rating: 2008-02-29
Pretty Impressive. Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I have only a couple of days of operating this radio. It replaced a TS-2000 (another good radio) and I have owned a 756Pro2,another good radio.
This radio is not for appliance operators. Understand me,Im a bit of an applliance operator,and thats why this radio gets it share of poor reviews. I pay NO attention to some clown who used the radio for a couple of hours at a club meeting.

This radio has a fine receiver and has an excellent array of tools to remove noise and interference. Im on 75 on the DX contest and its really very good.BUT again you need to USE the radio.This is an excellent radio,but does have some things that need improvment,one is the DNR. Funny under control of Ham Radio deluxe I can set the DNR the way I want....The volume control is really not an issue for me. You should have owned a FT847 That had a real volume control issue!all and all this radio is Very good!

More to follow as I play more with it and get it hooked to my TL-922A
N0RF Rating: 2008-02-26
Great rig for my style of operating Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
FT2000D review

Contrary to some of the comments on this list, I am a satisfied owner. I admit I haven't owned it for a long time yet, but I am an experienced ham who has owned dozens of rigs in the 31 years I've had my license. I've read all the negative comments and the tech deficiencies, and I've been looking for all these issues as I operate the rig.

I bought the FT2000D, DMU, all three MTU's, the SP2000 and the MD100.

My most recent rigs were: ProIII, 746Pro, TS2000, TS950SD, FT1000MP Mark V, FT1000D, FT920, IC781 along with lots of "lesser" rigs like the 706Mk2G, FT857, FT897, Pegasus, Delta II, IC737 and on and on. Even though I'm not a professional engineer, don't have a zillion dollars worth of test gear, and am not a contester, I have a fair amount of experience sitting in front of rigs and actually using them for qso's.

Having said all this, for what it all was worth, I'm going to write my evaluation here and you can take it or leave it. It is just my opinion. I'm not the voice of anywhere or anything except my own.

First of all, I downloaded the manual from the Yaesu site long before I decided to buy. I read it through at least twice cover to cover. There were few new concepts; everything was pretty familiar and not too difficult to understand. Of course some of it doesn't make a lot of sense until you have the actual radio in front of you, and some of it, like the adjustments for the mic eq, only make sense after you get some experience actually using it. I also downloaded the manuals for the other accessories and read them as well. I had a pretty good idea of what to expect out of the boxes.

I also read everything I could find on the net, including this forum. I was a bit apprehensive regarding the negatives here and elsewhere, but over the years I've learned to take some of the flames with a bit of skepticism. All the specs in the world mean little until you actually use the gear in real life circumstances.

It only took a few minutes to get the rig and speaker out of the boxes and hooked up. The rig powered up as expected, and I thought the first impression was quite nice. The next step was the DMU. It also went quickly, but there is certainly a learning curve with it. I started out without a keyboard connected and things went ok, but I made a lot of mistakes that had to be fixed once I figured out what I was doing. The DMU is one of the best features of the rig and really makes the whole package shine.

Next was assembling the MTUs. That was a surprise. I knew, from reading the manuals, that some assembly was required. I didn't realize just how much! The first one was a challenge, and I ended up with the main plate upside down and had to take it all apart and do it over. The first one took close to an hour as I was very careful not to booger up any screw heads and to be sure things were done correctly. After the first one, the others were easy and went together quickly with no problems. Hookup was simple once I studied the diagrams and figured out the pattern.

I just love the DMU. Yeah, it is expensive, but I got it with the deep discounted coupon price that expired the end of January. Both the DMU and MTU's had greatly reduced prices. It is more than worth the price to me. How many 756xxx owners have asked about or wished for a way to hook the display to an external monitor? Every one, I bet. I have the DMU hooked to a 19" lcd monitor, and honestly it would be just as good with a 14" or smaller. Even a 14" is a lot bigger than what is in the 756/746 rigs. Plus it does things none of the other do. The spectrum display is as good as the 756xx but BIGGER and has a several options unavailable on the Icom rigs. It has a larger span, which isn't all that great big a deal, but it is there if you want to look at a 5Mhz chunk of spectrum for some reason. I have found that I use the oscilloscope function as much or more than the spectrum scope. I enjoy seeing my own audio when transmitting, and the other guy’s when receiving. I often use the waterfall mode for cw and digital modes. It makes adjusting the bandwidth and shift functions to tune in a psk31 or cw signal a simple, quick and amazing experience. You simply have to see it and use it to appreciate how well it works and how great it looks. The DMU compensates for a few of the deficiencies of the rig itself. For example, on the rig, when adjusting the bandwidth, you just have a graphic representation of the bandwidth. You don’t actually know the width of the pass band filter. On the DMU you get not only a graphic representation, but it also tells you exactly what the pass band setting is. There is a lot of info on the DMU and it is easy to see and understand what it is telling the operator. The most important info is on the screen no matter what other features you select, either the spectrum scope, o’scope, logger, etc. I just wish the function keys on the keyboard would do what the buttons on the rig do so a person didn’t have to find the tiny buttons on the rig to change selections. I’ll probably write a separate review of the DMU later, so I’m not going into more details than this.

I ran the rig for a day without the MTU’s in order to have some experience without them to compare when they were installed. Right out of the box, I was impressed with how quiet the rx sounded. I live in a fairly rural development where neighbors are a hundred feet away or more in every direction. I don’t hear too much interference from tvs or computers or any of the other noisemakers found in city situations. It was about 9pm when I first turned on the power and 75 meters was full of big signals, some pretty close to each other. It immediately made me think it was sounding better than what I was used to hearing with the ProIII.

The next evening I was really interested in seeing how the rig performed on the nets that I normally check into nightly. In particular I was waiting to see how things would be when the North Dakota DATA net came on 3937 and the NC net was on 3938 at the same time. The ProIII always did a good job and normally I could hear just about everyone through the qrm from the other net, especially after picking the narrow 1.8 filter on the ProIII and moving the passband around a bit.

What I found that first night and what has remained consistent every night since then, is that the FT2KD is easier to adjust the bandwidth to whatever I want, easier to find a good setting for the shift and seems to do a better job of isolating the signal I want to hear from the ones I don’t. It isn’t that it works a LOT better than other rigs I’ve used, it is just easier and more effective. The rig has a Narrow button that automatically selects the 1.8Khz filter setting and that is very convenient, more so than cycling through the filter settings on the Pro. But I find I don’t use that button very often because sometimes 1.8 is too narrow, other times not narrow enough. The width control is quicker and easier and more flexible. You can of course do the same thing with the pro, but it takes two knobs to turn, the graphic representation on the screen is small and it takes longer to set up. They both work, they both are easy, I just like the Yaesu better.

In my experience, I can hear anyone that anybody in the rest of the state can hear, night after night, no matter where in the state they are, or what antenna they have, or what the propagation might be. Often I hear signals that others are not hearing at all, or that they can’t copy. I just use a G5RV at 40 feet, nothing special at all. When listening to the net, I have cycled through the 3 roofing filters, switched the MTU in and out and I must admit the differences are subtle. Sometimes you can’t tell any difference at all, other times there is a difference, but normally not a big difference. Maybe there just haven’t been enough big signals on the band while I’ve been on the air, but I have spent about 3 to 4 hours and up to 6 hours a night using the rig so far. Last weekend was the 160 ssb contest, and the band seemed quiet, full of signals from one end to the other, lots of them 30 and 40 over S9. I just didn’t hear any of the pops and splatter and junk I expected to hear on a contest evening on 160.

When operating 40 and 80 meter PSK31 the DMU really shines. We’re all familiar with the waterfall display on the psk software. The DMU has that same waterfall display, but you can speed it up considerably. As you narrow up the pass band, you can see the waterfall display change. Using the width and shift you can then filter out the guys you don’t want to hear and only hear the one guy you want to hear. It is quick and easy.

It works the same way on CW. You can see the cw signals on the waterfall. If you know your cw pitch setting is 750hz you can tune the guy using the vfo to put his signal about where the 750hz point would be on the waterfall. Then you can narrow up the pass band as narrow as you want. It won’t ring much till you get under 100hz. If you don’t have him tuned exactly at 750, you can shift the signal till he’s right in the middle of your pass band. If you change the pitch using the pitch control, he will stay in the middle of the filter even though you change the pitch.

The other night there was a big pileup on 30CW. After tweaking the width and shift, I was able to see and hear the DX station even though there were many calling him within a few hz of his freq. I was astounded at the ease and effectiveness. He was S0, but perfectly copy able, even when people were calling him while he was sending his report to the previous guy worked.

There is only one negative that bugs me with the Ft2KD. That’s the AGC. Every time my furnace kicks in or drops out, the AGC pops annoyingly. I’ve applied some of the recommended setting found on the net, but have not found a setting that completely eliminates the pops.

For normal day to day use, with rags chews, nets, a little dx’ing, some sstv and other digital modes mixed in, this rig is terrific. I am not a contester and how it performs in a contest doesn’t matter much to me. Once in a while I get on during a contest to give out North Dakota. My only problem with that is handling the guys calling for a new multiplier or to fill out their WAS. It can result in a full mailbox pretty quickly, no matter what radio I’m using.

I know, the volume adjustment is a little touchy, maybe the 3Khz roofing filter has poor specs, the AGC needs some attention, and all the other criticisms that people have made are probably completely valid too. For all I know, some of the reviews posted were using old firmware or older rigs and mine might have some things fixed that those didn’t. Some other rigs are easier to run without looking at the manual, for example, the ProIII. Some are cheaper, some more expensive. It is all in what you expect from your radio and yourself.

Part of being a good operator is learning your gear, compensating for difficulties and doing a good job in spite of what you don’t like about your rig or antenna or mic or whatever bugs you at the time. And this rig does what I need it to do, it does it very well, it is easy to run once you get the hang of it, and it looks great sitting on the shelf.



VE2PXP Rating: 2008-02-10
FT-2000D : A Marvel ! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Hello all,

I had a FT-990 for many years which one I very liked (loved) it and then, moved for a TS-2000X. The TS2KX was a real "Swiss knive" but for the HF side, nothing to compare with the FT-990.

I just bought a couple months ago a brand new FT-2000D with the MD-100 Mic. One of my friend has a FT-2000 and he coached me (thanks Real!) at the begining. Then, I red carefully the manual, installed the PCC-2000 soft and tried all control / filters, etc.. I played a lot with mike adjustments and WOW !!!

Well, the FT-990 was a great machine but the FT-2000D is a real Marvel ! I especially appreciate the contour filter, the mic equ, notches and the NB (2 modes): is very efficient for me since I live just beside high voltage transmission lines.

I configured my hand mic, MD-100 and also... my D-104 with very nice reports !!!

I really think Yaesu designed a marvelous rig. I really don't regret to have bought the 200W version. For those interested to a very nice / high performance / powerful / highly configurable rig, go ahead with this one.

73, Sylvain VE2PXP
M0GBK Rating: 2008-01-31
Requires a lot of rework Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
Purchased one of the first batch shipped into the UK. Firstly let me say that the receiver is very quiet and quite sensitive but this was the only plus point. I quickly discovered that the FT-2000 had some major design flaws, the noise blanker was completely useless on any type of ignition noise, the microphone compressor always produced major distortion into the audio whatever the setting, the SSB peak output power was around 75 watts, the Digital noise blanker and noise reduction needs some serious work. I tested the rig against the nearest Icom competitor and was blown away by my findings. The basic PRO3 was a far better radio all round. All in all this rig needs some serious rework to compete with its rivals and it certainly does not do what it says on the tin.
K6SBA Rating: 2008-01-28
I like it so much, I'm selling it! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I like this radio so much, I’m selling it! If that doesn’t make sense, let me add that I am selling my FT-2000 (100-w) to buy a FT-2000D. I have decided to run without an amp, and the extra 100 watts of the “D” will give me a little more “headroom” when operating RTTY at 80-100 watts. I have owned my 2000 for a little over a year, and it has performed without any problems. I have done all the firmware updates. I also was in the vicinity of Yaesu in December, so I decided to take my radio in for a check-up and any tweaking done by the Yaesu tech staff. I received the radio back in only a few days, and it continues to meet my expectations.

Many comments have been made about the claimed less-than-stellar receiver specs with regard to 3rd order IMD at close spacing. This single number has led a number of reviewers to dismiss the radio as unsatisfactory for contesting. Well I am not a hardcore contester (i.e. mediocre antennas and only 600 watts of power), but a receiver’s performance in a contest depends on a lot more factors than just its close in IMD.

To me a receiver with the best specs but poor ergonomics or clunky user interface is a bad radio. I don’t care how good the numbers are; if the radio contributes to your fatigue factor, it is not a good contest radio. In the areas of ergonomics and user interface, I believe the 2000 is at the top.

I owned a long line of Yaesus so I am probably biased toward the design philosophy. I have also owned a PROII and a recent rig from our friends in Tennessee. Ergonomics may be a personal thing, but the size, placement and operation of the FT-2000’s controls excel in my opinion. I do not need, nor particularly like the screen implementation of the PRO series. I realize many people just love them. If I want to see my radio on an LCD screen, I fire up Ham Radio Deluxe. The VFO knob on the 2000 is a real joy, even better than on my previous MKV. Again, this is personal choice, but I have never liked the lower right placement of the PRO’s VFO; the same goes for the Orion.

If I were to point to one feature offered by the 2000 that really sets it apart, it is the Contour control. When properly set up and adjusted, this control really enhances your ability to make a weak signal intelligible.

Okay…no radio is perfect, so what don’t I like about the 2000? I am not a big fan of the DSP noise reduction; the use isn’t very intuitive and I don’t think very effective. When trying to clean up a signal, I reach for the Contour control first. In all fairness, I don’t think the promise of DSP noise reduction matches reality on any radio I have used (Yaesu, Icom, TT.) Also, while the autotuner is OK, it doesn’t seem to match as well as the one on my previous MKV. I end up using my Palstar manual tuner instead.

In summary, the FT-2000 has great ergonomics, it’s a pleasure to operate, and has very nice build quality. I like it so much, I’m selling it to buy another one!
73 de K6SBA
David in Santa Barbara
WD5JNC Rating: 2008-01-17
Steep learning curve but worth it Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
My other radio is a FT-990 that I have used for several years. So when my Son bought me the FT-2000 with utune moduel for 20/30 mtrs. I had a lot to learn about this rig. First off this is not a radio you take out of the box and operate without reading the manual. I have made the usual mistakes playing with the menus and getting things out of wack. After doing my home work and finaly getting the radio setup the way i like I find it a real pleasure to operate. But the use of the filters ect. does take a bit of work to get used to not just throwing a narrower filter in line like the old 990. I have been able to filter out close stations on both SSB and CW without degradeing the station i want to hear. I am waiting for a big contest to see how well it works on realy crowded conditions. I set the contour to +10db and it realy pulls up a weak station from the noise. Not being an audiophile I have left the transmit bandwith and EQ at the factory defaults.

I dont think this is the radio for the ham that wants to throw the manual away then try to use the radio. This one takes some learning to operate but with the adjustments that are possable it will please the ham that wishes to put some effort into setting it up.
All in all I am very happy with the FT-2000 and think it will give me as many years of service as the FT-990 has. even if i had to pay for it it would still be worth haveing.