1603: Yaesu FTX-1 Firmware Update Made EASY

a firmware version update ever since this Uh. This radio was released around the time of Daton, which was three weeks ago at the time of this recording, and this firmware update has been out for about a week, so it was pretty quick, and I expect more firmware updates. We'll talk about that a little bit later. But these steps should work for any version of firmware, regardless of where you're starting and where you're upgrading too. So let's take a look right now, all right, this is directly

from the Yazoo website. This is this is the website right here. Go to yazu dot com, scroll down to products VHF A I'm sorry, HF Radios and FTX one series is right there in at the at the top, and then you click on up. Once you get on the ftx one series page which includes the field and Optima versions you can see right there at the top. You get there and you click on updates here, and these are the files that you want right here. So the bottom link is the actual firmware ftx one USA firmware.

This is this top link here in English's firmer update information. This is basically the stuff that they've fixed or this is extra. No, that's not even a change log. Really, it's tell you a little bit about what the file. This file contains, and I've already downloaded the file. And then these are the instructions. So all of this is located right here. I'm not sure what the purpose of

this is. Actually, this is just telling you that basically, please read the ft x one series firm or upgrade Manual, which is this right here, and it says implements improvements as of May of twenty twenty five, that was last month, improved operation problems. That's not very much. That's not a very good change log. Okay, after installing firmwork completely, the

ftx one must be reset. Referred to the ftx one Series Operating Manual, page seventy nine, or refer to the firmware manual, which it tells you over here, so you have to reset it. So if you've saved any memory channels, it is probably gonna wipe them out. FYI, this should be more of a change log. It's what that should be, is just not so whatever. Okay, that's fine. So we're gonna start here. Okay, and again this will work for

any series. And right here, so I've read through all this and I've done a couple of these steps already. Right here it says format the micro SD card in advance with the transceiver. So we're gonna do that in these steps here just a minute. It doesn't tell you how to do that. It does tell you to look in the manual under using micro SD card in the uh described in the Owner's Operation Manual, and I can

tell you right now that's on page sixty four. So the first thing I did was I tried to format I've got I've got a few micro SD cards for some of my cameras. I've got micro SD cards for my drone, and I don't have very many small micro SD cards. So I took a sixty four gig and tried it, and it gave me a formatting error. Okay, so I opened the manual. I refer back here. I opened the manual. Page sixty four says that you can use a two gigabyte micro SD card or a four, eight, sixteen,

or thirty two gigabyte micro SDHC card. Okay, I think the HC is just a faster read. I'm not sure what the difference is. I don't really care for the purposes of this. So I dug through my micro SD card holder here that I keep in my camera bag. I found an eight gig and it worked fine. So I got an eight gig micro SD card in here and it works fine. And I'm gonna show you what to do on that right now, because the manual here tells you to format the card, but it doesn't tell

you how to do it. But it does tell you how to do it if you scroll down right here, like on page whatever page this is page six, page six to you how to format the micro SD card. So we start here at the main menu, and we long press this button here and that takes us into the regular deep menu. Okay, And you've got three pages in here, page one, page two, and page three over here.

Page three gives you these options down at the bottom right here, and we want to choose extension settings there and then it'll probably start at the top right there. But then you can you can use the touchscreen or you can use this indicator knob right here, the top right knob, and we choose SD card and you can see it's on format. It's going to start at the top of the menu there. Come down to format, click on done. I don't know why it says done, but

this is what this is how you do it. You click on done and then it says format card okay or cancel. We choose okay, and we're going to see new format progress. It only takes a few seconds. There we go format completed and then we just back out of that. So that's all you got to do to format the SD card. There's really nothing else to it. So let's go here and start again at the top of this page. So so we formatted the SD card and it wants us to look and see what it says.

Going to the extension menu, touch forward two times to page three, which is where we just were, and touch soft version. That's going to be the software version that is currently on the radio. So we're going to go here back into that menu. Yeah, extension setting, that's correct soft version, and you can see we are on display version of zero one dash zero one. Main is zero one dash zero zero, and you can you can see all those here. SDR is zero one dash zero three.

District is USA. So that's the software version that we're on right now that we're going to be updating from. So it talks about downloading the firmware, and I've already got this ZIP file. I'll grab this zip file here in a minute. I've got this downloaded to my hard drive on a Windows box. Apologize to some of you who don't like Windows. Not really my problem, but uh, you know, so we're going to extract that to I know you guys can't see what I'm doing right now.

So I downloaded the zip file. I extracted it to my desktop. Here it says unzipped the downloaded file using a PC or Windows OS. Right click on the downloaded zip extract all the firmware file. Extension extension is sfl Sierra Foxtrot LIMA in the folder. So I've got the folder and it's currently titled FTX one USA Firmware Update twenty twenty five five, so it's just named twenty twenty five O five. And then inside of the folder we see these files right here, there's four files inside of

the folder. This manual that I've been reading to you from the website is also included in here. You can open up that manual and it's the same manual that is listed that you download from the website. And then you've got these SFL files here, and you can see the bottom one says main, this one says display, and this one says dispboot display boot. I assume that means so. And they're all about three megabytes. Look at two and a half to three megabytes something like that. Not very

large at all. So we're gonna go back over here, and it says copy the Furware two and micro SD card. It should be to a micro SD card. I don't know. I'm a sticker for things like that. Copy the file directly under the ftx one folder. So somehow I'm gonna have to get this micro SD card. I hope that now that I've formatted the micro SD card in the Yazu radio, I hope that that Windows will read it. That's gonna be the trick. I haven't tried this yet, so let's try that. I'm put this in my fancy

little USB connector there. We're gonna see if that comes out. It does, Okay, that comes up right there, So let me bring that window up so you guys can see it that. It's see ftx one folder from the formatted SD card that I just took out of the radio, and you can see right here it's got capture, memalist, menu and playlist. And according to these instructions right here, I need to put the firmware in this location under the ftx one folder. So QSO log is not something

I have because I haven't logged any QSOs yet. So we're going to bring this over here, and I gotta find there it is, okay, so I gotta find that, and I got to find these three files. Okay, So those are the three firmware files there, copy to this location. That's where we put them. Okay, how to update the firmware. Turn the transceiver off. Let me take this out here, and I got to put the micro est card back in.

By the way, here's something that's useful. If you haven't seen this yet, you put you insert the micro SD card this direction, not this direction. I mean, you'll figure it out, because as long as you don't force it, you won't be able to put it in this way. So you put it in with the fate what I would call the face of the card facing down or facing towards the back of the radio. So I'm gonna go ahead and turn the transceiver off because that's the

first step after putting the card back in anyway. And if I were to put this card in now, it would pop up a menu that says proceed to update or something like that. But we're not going to do that right now. So here's what we're gonna do. Turn the transceiver off when updating, remove the battery, which I've already done that, and connect it to an external power source. Now I've got another video. I'm going to talk about this battery and what I think about the battery, and

some drawbacks about the battery. The battery is USB C chargeable, but it requires a fifteen volt power source with I think two hundred and fifty wants or FO hundred fifty wants, I can't remember what it is. It requires more of a power source than what your standard USBC connector is going to give you I'm going to talk about that another video. But one thing I have learned is that the USB the gigaparts, the latest Gigabarts battery box with

the upgraded USBC charger does charge the battery on this radio. Okay, you can save five percent on that box with the coupon code of KC five HWB, and they put them on sale periodically. I suspect they'll have them on sale next month or in a couple months for Huntsville Hamfest, but we'll see. Anyway, I've got this plugged in via this cable right now. Here's the battery batteries off the radio.

I've got this plugged in via this cable, and it's actually running down to the same Gigabarts battery box plugged into power poles direct twelve direct to twelve volts. Okay, so that's what I've got plugged in right now. So it says to take the battery out and plug in directly to twelve volts. That's the first step. Turn the transceiver off. I did that. Connect to a power source, insert the Mike Gorest card. Okay, good. Important, do not skip this section if the current main firmware is zero

one zero zero, proceed to step four. That's what it was, right, yes, yeah, so if the current so once you update from this, you probably haven't wanted to do this again. If the current version is different from zero one zero zero, proceed to step eleven. I had to go look again because there were several numbers in there. Main is zero one zero zero, as you saw earlier in this video. I should have rebound my own video, but I didn't. Okay,

so we're gonna start at step four. Okay, So if you once you update the main past zero one zero zero, which is I think is what we're about to do, then you won't have to do these steps four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. You'll proceed directly to step eleven. Okay. If the current main firm reversion is different than V zero one dot zero zero, start from step eleven. Okay, so we're gonna do this whole thing. So while pressing the Q and B, the VM, and the MV buttons simultaneously,

all three buttons simultaneously turn on the transceiver. So that is I think that's all three of these at the top, Q and B, that's this one MV, so this one here, this one here, and this one here, so one, two, and three, and we're gonna power this on. Okay, it says on the screen right there, I know that's small. In the window, it says firmware update at the very top right there, and it says insert latest version firmware sd card. Touch the screen to continue, but the manual says,

do not touch the screen, proceed to next step. Okay, okay, turn the function knob clockwise five clicks or more. The Yazu bootloader screen appears. Okay, turn the function knob five clicks or more. There we go. Okay, there we go. Make sure that the display mark that the display shows the check mark, then touch update. Do not mark anything other than display. So it wants us to do the display first. And that's exactly what came up. What came up was display is checked here, Maine is not checked.

It's got a checkbox there. Both of them say ready, and then DSP and SDR say no such file. So there's no update for those today. So there's your there's your update display, Maine. And it wants us to do only the display update at first. Okay, make sure the display, then touch update, touch update right here, Do not turn off power. You can see the indicator going right there. It says, skipped on Maine. So we're just updating to display right now, which is exactly what it wants us

to do. Again, I think this is an initial update because this is factory firmware. Okay, so the display turned off. It says, the update prey indicator is displayed when the firm or transfer begins. Please wait until the progress is completed. Do not remove the SD card until or turn off the transceiver while updating. If the update is interrupted, transceiver will not operate properly. When and the update is complete.

The power is automatically turned off, it says. Right here, unplug the DC power chord, then reconnect the powers automatically turned on. Proceed to step twelve. Okay. So that's one thing about this radio that I find a little bit I don't know if annoying is the right word, but strange. Okay. So we're turned off right now. There's no lights, no anything. Every time you apply power to the radio, it comes automatically,

and that's what it's selling me to do. It says, to remove this, put the power back in right there. It didn't come back on. Okay, my power did not come back on. It said, unplug the DC power cord, reconnect and the power is automatically turned on. Proceed to step twelve. That's what it says right here. This did not happen. I had to press my power button for it to come on. Okay, So okay, well it's on now. Proceed to step twelve, press the funk press and hold

the function knob. Go back into the main media. In other words, okay, touch the extension setting forward two screens. That's where we're already at for two screens. If you're not at the extension setting, okay, touch SD card and then touch done on the firmware updates. So it wants you to go in here, touch SD card and touch done on the firmware update, and then it's checking. Right there, a list of firmware stored on the micro SD card is displayed, it says right here in this screenshot, check

mark indicates firmware to be updated. Ready indicates updateable files, No such file, there's no target, and broken file indicates there's some kind of corrupted version. So we have got clearly, we've got a display update and a main update. So the display is VO one dash show two and the main is VO one das Show four. That's the firmware that we're about to apply to this radio, and it

says this one this time. It says it's okay to do both at the same time, because it says to go ahead and touch the main and put the checkbox in that one. So that's what we're gonna do. There, there we go. Now both of those are ready, and it says touch update to update the confirmation screen to cancel, click cancel, touch okay. After if we click update, it'll say update and click okay. So we're plugged into power and it says something about do not turn off power,

and there we go. All right. You can see the indicator going right now. While that's going, let me tell you about today's sponsor. Today's video sponsored by Messi and ploonyco Acts. When I take this radio out into the field, most of the time I'll be feeding it with Mezzi and plenty co Acts, especially if I'm on Poda. You can save a ten percent discount on all Mezzi and Ploony Coacts, connectors, items, tools, everything they have at the link in the description below, on the gigabarts website and

on the mezzi dot it website from Italy. If you can't find something on gigabarts, go to mezi it. Enter the same coupon code HR two cables. You'll get ten percent off of either website with those coupon codes. Thank you, Meszi and plenty for supporting the channel. All right, that one is still go. Okay, so the display finished. You can see it's got a green check mark here. Now that one says finished. The main is going taken a little bit longer than the first one. Still, yeah, it's moving. Okay.

That took about two minutes, maybe two and a half something like that. And then the radio rebooted and it comes back to this screen. Now we're gonna go back over here. When the update is complete, the power is automatically turned off and then on. That's what it did. Reset the transceiver see below. Okay, while pressing back and find fast turn the transceiver on. Okay, so it doesn't tell you to turn the transceiver off, but obviously that's what you have to do. So we're gonna go back

over here. We're gonna turn it off right there. We're gonna press these two buttons at the same time, and we're gonna turn the transceiver on and then that's what it says should have the frequency display. We'll return to one forty four dot zero on the subside and seven dot zero on the main side. That's exactly what happened. Okay, this completes the firmware upgrading process according to the manual.

So we're gonna go over here and look it's I'm gonna put I've saved one memory channel in here, so not a big deal to me. The three d uhs waterfowl is on. I don't have an antenna hook connected right now, obviously, Okay, so we're gonna go back in here and look, go here stension and we're gonna scroll down to software version. Now we're on display version v OH one dash Show two, Maine is v OH one, DAS Show four, DSP is OH one dash Show one.

There wasn't an update on that one, and SDR is OH one dash Show three wasn't an update on those two. So this was a firmware update for the display and the main not the DSP or the SDR. That's what we did. All successful, working as intended, and we can change back and I can go back into the repeater that I had this program down. So once again, this is the first firmware update that Yezu has released since this radio was debuted last month. I'm sure there will

be more Firmer updates. I'm looking forward to seeing how well this one works and what they actually fixed. Because there wasn't it said operating problems. I don't really know what that means, so check the links in the description below for everything. This should work for every version of Firmer update from now forward. Put a comment below let me know what other types of videos you'd like to see about this radio. Seventy three