E1605: 5 Things Wrong with the Yaesu FTX1

your comments are below. Let's go. I saw a video online last week and it said something along the lines

I don't even remember what channel it was. Right now, there's a lot of videos out here about this radio, and it said something along the lines of ham tubers are all praising this radio, but they're getting paid to do it, and none of these reviews are honest, and this this, this and this and this and blah blah blah blah, and something about how you know nobody's given this radio a bad review because Jesu's paying I'm old to do it, Okay, I've said a thousand times in

this channel that Jesu's never paid me, ICM's never paid me, Kenwood's never paid me. Gigabarts has never paid me to do a review of a radio, and I I don't know how to say I don't know how to say it any other way. So that's just simply not true. Okay, I'm not going to dwell on that. I'm moving on. But today, no radio's perfect. No radio is perfect. So today I'm going to tell you about the five things that I think were a swing and a miss for

this radio, for the field model specifically. Okay, and this could really kind of apply to the optimum model as well, But today we're going to be talking about the field radio. The first thing, Okay, the first thing, and this and everyone when I got this, this exact model at daytonhamvention, the first thing everyone said was that it was heavy. If you take the battery off the back of it, it's still have I got a signal stick on it right now. So we're going to talk about the the

B and C ports here in a second. Okay, it's heavy. It's about the same side as the icon Icy seven O five, but it's much heavier, much heavier than the seven O five. I don't know about much heavier. I'm not sure about much heavier. My icy seven O five is currently locked into a armolock cage with an extron battery, and I don't feel like taking it apart right now. So maybe I'll grab a seven oh five from a friend or something and see how it compares to this.

I'm wanna weigh them both and see what they weigh. But you can tell when you pick up this radio, you can tell that it is heavier than its icon counterpart. Okay, you know, is it heavy? Is it too heavy? I don't know, but it's gonna be. But if you're if you're wanting to backpack this radio, then it's gonna be a heavy piece of kit. So as a side note, I will say this because I've been watching a few

other videos about this as well. There's a difference between field this is called a field radio and gastone tech prepper. He made a video saying that he doesn't he's gonna sell his he doesn't like it. He's like, this is not a field radio. They used field as a buzzword. It's not a field radio. And I'm like, Okay, I see where he's coming from. And I'm not necessarily saying he's wrong, but I think it's important to realize there's

a difference between field and backpackable. I've been saying for years that the Icy seven five is Icy seven oh five is not a backpackable radio because you would either take a chance on puncturing your screen if you were to stuff it into a backpack and hike up a mountain with it, or you'd have to put a cage around it, making it even more bulky, because this one and the seven five both have large screens on them, so you'd have to put a cage around it or a topper or put an extra bag in it, and

it makes it more bulky, more heavy, and less portable in my opinion. So just because this is called field doesn't mean it should be Field shouldn't always be related to backpackable. And that's just that's kind of one of the things that I wanted to talk about today. But that's a side note. Okay, Number two is the ben Sports. Now let's go over here and check out these b and Sports. Here's what the radio looks like. I want

to set it, let me turn. I'm gonna power this thing off real quick because I want to show you guys the back of the radio. Okay, so here is this is I mean, I'm this falls under the line of what the heck were you thinking? So this is the orientation of the radio. It sits like this, okay, and sits and I like the way that when the batteries on it, it kind of sits at an angle, so it's easy to read and easy to use with

the buttons. Okay, But this is the This right here is the HF B and C port, and this is the VHF UHF B and cport. Now, what do you think is going to happen if I put a B and C and to vertical intenna on that right there while I'm operating? If will I be able to operate HF with the B and C port right there, because that's where my HF intenna connects to. Why didn't they put the VHF on the top of the HF on the bottom. That doesn't make any sense to me. Why

put the VHF down here? Now I will say this also, okay, and this is also true of the IC seven oh five. When you power this thing on and you've got the B and C connected. Now it's in a horizontal fashion right now. But we're gonna we're gonna this up and watch the SWR meter KC five HBB testing. So I'm hitting the repeater high SWR. I'm gonna go over here and I'm gonna go to the two meter band and just doesn't matter where I'm at here. Okay, KC five

h TOVB testing. You might hear that in the not as high as SWR, but it's still high SWR, and it's still high. If I were to turn the radio up vertically, it's still high. The SWR came up when I turned the radio up vertically. Now that is a common issue that people complain about with the IC seven oh five as well. Okay, so you need a pigtail on it. Basically, you need a pigtail on the you need a counterpoise on it to get the SWR down. So that's that's weird. But it happens on the seven

oh five. So maybe it's something about this design. I don't know, but i'd and I don't really consider that an issue much because it's kind of what we're used to, those of us who own a seven oh five. But

why are the d and ports backwards like that? The HF should be on the bottom and the VHF should be on the top, so that if you wanted to connect a vertical VHF antenna to your radio while you're operating PODA and you're in the field, and you've got an antenna connected via B and C to the HF port, which should be on the bottom, you could put a vertical INTENTA on the top. You could monitor one forty six to five to two at the same time that you're operating HF. I said, we were going to mostly

talk about the field today, and that's true. But the optima is I have the optima. I have the amplifier. It's around here somewhere. It's actually inside the house right now. But I think an obvious miss was that it doesn't have a separation cable. I think a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of the comments I've got is that this should be separatable. It should have

a separation cable. There should be a way to mount the amplifier in your vehicle under the seat, behind the seat, behind the back seat, which would be the case in my truck, and run the face of the radio up top and run like a six foot or a twelve foot extension cable between the amplifier and the radio so that you can operate one hundred watts from the vehicle and then take the face out if you wanted to take the take the field unit out and take it out to the park and do some QRP, PODA or

soda with it if you wanted to. Okay, I don't disagree with that. There's been a lot of comments saying I'm not gonna buy this radio, or I cancel my reservation because the separation doesn't work or it's not made to be separated. I think a couple of people have successfully separated it and used it remotely with some RCA cables. At this point in time, I have not tried that, and I've heard from Yazoo that if you fudge up the radio by doing that, it's gonna avoid your warranty.

So just be aware. I'm not telling you to do it or not to do it. I'm just saying be aware. But yeah, the non separatable feature of the radio, the non remote feature of the radio where you can't run a longer cable between the amplifier and the head, I think that was kind of a miss as well. Would have been a lot more versatile of a radio if they would have built it in such a way where it would be able to allow that, you know, straight from the factory. Okay, the next thing, and this is

something that legit is a problem. I'll show you why. If you guys haven't seen Jason's video yet, Okay, he did this video about and it's called the Yazu YESUFTX has a flaw and we're gonna listen to a short clip here real quick.

is missing. And yes, if you go watch Jason's video, you watch the whole video there and I'll link those in the description below. But he found a flaw. YAESU watched his video. They replied to him and said, Yep, you're right, there's no way to reply. We're gonna have to fix that. So they're gonna add it in later again, props to Yazu for responding, reaching out and saying, yeah, yeah, that's something we're gonna have to address. Okay. They could

have ignored him, they could have argued with him. They didn't do that. They were pretty professional about it, in my opinion. So there's that. Okay, the last and fine, that's four things. The last and final thing, Thing number five, Thing thing number five, And these are just some things I came up with on my own. I'd be interested to see what you guys have, if you have this radio, what your experience is with the operation of the radio,

and what you think they can improve. So when I took this into the field, or when I will take it back into the field, I will feed this thing, most likely with Mezi and plenty coacs. Mezi emploenty Coaxs is the sponsor of today's video. You can always save a twenty percent discount with the coupon code of HR two cables at the link in the description. Blow That discount applies to the cables, the connectors, the tools they use to put the coaks together, all kinds of stuff

from Messi employee. Thank you Messi emploenty for supporting this channel. Let's talk about point number five. The last thing we're going to talk about is the battery, the battery on the back of the ftx one. Now, according to the manual, the battery requires a certain amount of voltage and wattage right here USBPD forty five WOTT and fifteen volt at two ams. So it requires a fifteen volt forty five

WoT charger to charge this battery. And the reason I have this gigabarts box in front of the camera right now is because this is the latest Gigabarts Explorer box. This new PD port right here, which has a sixty five WHT USBC charger on it. You a sixty five why p USBC port on it right there will absolutely one charge this radio, this battery, the battery and the radio. Actually, so this gigabarts box does work just fine for charging

the USBC battery on the ftx one. Field. Now, as I said a minute ago, you're not gonna be lugging this big battery box or a large fifteen volt PD charging supply up a hill or up a mountain. The word field once again is it does not mean backpackable, because you wouldn't be able to charge this battery via a regular charging brick. Now some I've tried two or three charging bricks. One of them works and two of them do not, so it's kind of a miss in my opinion. That it's great that it has USB C

on both the radio and the battery. The battery has a USBC port. You can charge the battery, you can charge the radio. You can charge the battery through the radio with USB C. I'm gonna demonstrate that here in a minute. And you can charge the battery through the radio with a twelve power source as well, just by plugging in the power poles on it. And I'm gonna show you that right here. But how is that field worthy? I mean, what kind of charging source are you gonna

have to take with you to go up a mountain? Again, I don't really think this is mountain back packable radio, but some of you are gonna want to try that, so or take it into the field for a few hours and you're gonna lug around a big battery box with you. I usually do that anyway, but I drive to Poda so it doesn't bother me. So are you gonna do that with it? Now? I will say this once the battery is fully charged, it don't last about

nine or ten hours. So if you're going hiking up a mountain overnight, or you're gonna do a drive up summit and camp overnight, you'll probably have plenty of battery to work with over the next overnight or through the evening or morning hours the next morning if you camp out overnight or something like that. So the battery does last a long time, but the fact that it takes such a large power source to charge it is a

little bit a little bit of a fail. As I mean, if you're gonna call it a field radio, that's my thing. If you're gonna call it a field radio, that's the problem. So I'm gonna show you right here. I've got this USB C port right here plugged into the battery box that I just showed you, and you can plug it in to this battery this way, just like that, and that's a charging light right there that's charging the battery

directly from that Gigabarts battery box. Now, the other way we can do it is I can take this and plug this into the radio right here, and that's plugged into the radio and it's charging the battery. So you can charge with the same type of PD power source PD USBC power source. You can charge the radio through the USB C cable. You can charge the battery through the USBC cable, and this way you will get well, now I'm not sure if you get you know, that's a good question. I wonder if you get a full

ten watts on that or not. It'll tell you right here when I go to the menu. Yes it does, okay, right there, it says RF power ten watts. If I took off this external power source, that number drops to six watts right there. So now it's at six watts, and now it's at ten watts. So you can absolutely run a full ten watts out of this radio by using the USBC charger into the radio itself. You can also use the twelve volt charger this guy right here that I put power pools on and take this off

right here, turn this back around. We're gonna plug this in right there. We're gonna take the power pole connection and now I'm running direct twelve volts into the radio and it is still charging the battery. So that's three ways to charge the battery, but all of them require

a pretty beef. If he either a full twelve volte power supply like a twelve volt battery or twelve vote power supply plugged into AC mains or something like that, or a minimum of forty five watt power deliver report from USBC, which is not very fueld capable in my opinion. So those are the five things that I think that I noticed first off the bat that I'm like, I wish it would do this, or I wish it wouldn't

do this. And you know, basically four of those things are hardware issues would require hardware changes, I'll put it that way. And the APRS reply thing that can be fixed in firmware and software. I'm not really worried about that. And I also noticed that there was a problem with the power meter when I was at PODA. The power meter would sometimes drop, but the power output on the radio was fine, so it was just a problem with the meter. I believe that was fixed in the latest firmware.

I haven't taken the radio back out to a park since I updated to the latest firmware. There's a firmware from May of twenty twenty five, came out a couple of weeks ago, really shortly after hamvention actually, and I think that fixed the power meter thing. But I'm gonna have to check on that and see and we'll go from there. So I'll probably do a follow up video

to this later on. But I wonder what you guys think about these five things, And I wonder if you've noticed anything else that's kind of like a show stopper for you, if you were if you've seen something, whether you if you don't own the radio, what stopped you from buying it if you wanted it, or if you do own the radio, if you're like, man, this just I don't like this feature at all. I wish it would would do or would not do this thing. Put a comment in the description blow I'd love to hear

your thoughts. Seventy three