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.
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