# bought new kit today! FTM-400



## Dakine (Sep 4, 2012)

http://www.yaesu.com/indexVS.cfm?cm...EFF8482F3367495319&DivisionID=65&isArchived=0

I was originally looking at a different radio, but this is SOOOOO much better for me. I'm really happy I got this, and I can't emphasize enough about how a brick and mortar store with people who REALLY know how it works is better than saving 5% and buying online.

If I bought online, I'd have spent roughly the same money and I'd have HALF the radio I have now. it took almost 90 minutes to figure that out talking about every single thing, radios, antennas and mounts before the conversation shifted and I started looking at this instead.

SOOOOOOOOO HAPPY! Cant wait to get it mounted up! not only in the truck, but truck 2, and I want to clear out a space in my office to use it inside too, especially since it's cold as hell lately LOL!


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## Country Living (Dec 15, 2009)

Since I rarely click on links, please provide make, model, etc. We're looking for a radio.


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## Dakine (Sep 4, 2012)

Hi CountryLiving,

it's a Yaesu (brand) FTM-400 DR/DE (model)

There's several really good reasons why this is a GREAT radio for me and I can think of several reasons why this might be a HORRIBLE radio for someone else. Since you mentioned that you're in the market for a radio I'd like to give you a basic run down of why I chose this instead of something else. I'd ask the question "what do you want the radio(s) to do?" talking to each other is obvious, and very cheap handhelds will do that just fine all day long if you are in a location with line of sight, or have LOS to a local repeater.

If you want to send data packets instead of just analog transmissions you're going to pay for that.

If you want dual band, so you can monitor two different freqs at the same time, or maybe even use a crossband repeat feature on some radios.. you pay for that!
cross band repeat is a way that you can setup a mobile radio in your truck to listen on one frequency and then repeat that at the 50W power, or even to a repeater, while on your 5W handheld you can see the truck, but you can't see the repeater. Its pretty cool!

If you want to talk from the house to the barn, you should buy a pair of BaoFeng UV5R's and call it a day, you're out $70 and they work great for what they are. a tad cumbersome to program but with youtube vids and many websites (including this one) with people willing to help newbies, it's not that tough.

If you want to do a LOT more than talk from the house to the barn now you need to start deciding what features make sense and what is fluff and just costing money. 

For example, I went to the store completely sold on buying the Yaesu 8900, it's a GREAT radio it's QUAD band! it does 440, 2m, 6m and 10m bands!!! but... I'm not going to spend the money today to get the tri band or quad band antenna, and the few people out on those bands that I could talk to are very low in numbers. It was simply a "nice to have"

when I looked at the features of the 400 I bought today, and considering the 6m and 10m bands were simply fluff, it was not difficult at all to completely drop the 2900 I was going to buy and put that money into this slightly more expensive but WAY WAY MORE radio that I will actually use!

The 400 is not a good radio for a lot of people though, it's expensive!!! and it has a lot of capability that some people just don't care about. it can send a picture across the air to someone else! that's pretty freakin cool! but if you want to talk from the house to the barn, do you want to spend $700 getting this radio up and running? probably not.. NOT when you can do that job for $70 and call it a day!

There are so many things you can do with radio... you need to figure out what do you REALLY WANT from your radio and comms and then go from there!


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## Country Living (Dec 15, 2009)

Thanks. Good explanation. We have radios to use around the ranch. I'm looking for something a bit more robust and this is where I have zero knowledge and zero experience. 

I've tried to read articles, research radios and all the information goes right over my head.... all I want right now is a radio that will allow us to primarily receive information from other countries should the SHTF in the US. We do not have good line of sight and I am unaware of repeaters in this area; although, I'm sure there are some because of the topography in this area. 

My better half is going to San Antonio in a few weeks and the plan was to drop into Grumpy's and get some recommendations from him; however, the business closed after he passed away.

Do you think the radio you bought also fit our needs? I finally clicked on your link - only because I trust you and am confident you won't send me into virus-land. :2thumb:


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## bkt (Oct 10, 2008)

I *really* like the display on that thing - very easy to read. Looks like a great rig. Sorry if I missed it, but are you using this as a mobile rig or as a base station?


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

bkt said:


> Sorry if I missed it, but are you using this as a mobile rig or as a base station?


He's doing both 



Dakine said:


> Cant wait to get it mounted up! not only in the truck, but truck 2, and I want to clear out a space in my office to use it inside too, especially since it's cold as hell lately LOL!


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## uncledon (Mar 1, 2013)

Is anyone interested in starting a Ham Radio Club? I obtained my technician license several months ago and I am interested in communicating with other operators with same type interest. I also could use an Elmer, some one that knows what they are doing. Would like to meet up once a week on radio. Please contact via PM. If you are interested, please let me know.


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## bkt (Oct 10, 2008)

Maybe. We could "meet" via echolink on a different repeater every week.  There really isn't anything we could share on the radio that we can't share via this forum, though. An Elmer we could ask things of would be outstanding - I only got my tech a year ago. While I'm learning, a seasoned mentor would help a whole lot.


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## uncledon (Mar 1, 2013)

I have had my technicians license for a couple of months but apparently if you are not a member of a local club they will not talk to you. Couple of weeks ago I was working on simplex and came across a couple of guys talking on the radio. I could hear both of their conversations really clear. When I spoke to them they could hear parts of my conversation and they informed me that they were talking on a repeater and that I needed to set my tone correctly in order to talk with them. While I was trying to figure out the tone, they left. 

So how come I could hear them clearly, but they could not hear me? I have many questions like this.

Maybe I need to print out a repeater frequency list for each area that I travel so that I will know the local frequencies and tone that people are talking. Does anyone simple talk on simplex any more?

I also am interest in talking on 10 meter but a lot of people do not have multi-band radios. Mine is an Yaesu 857D mobile unit which gives me that ability to talk on all ham frequencies, however I am limited by my license to 10 meter, 6 meter, 2 meter and so on.

This is why I would like to talk on the radio and why I am interested in finding an Elmer. Regards.


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## bkt (Oct 10, 2008)

uncledon said:


> I have had my technicians license for a couple of months but apparently if you are not a member of a local club they will not talk to you.


That's certainly not the case, at least around here. People are pretty cool and will carry on conversations pretty willingly. Just make sure you're following convention (give your call at least once every 10 minutes, open with your call, close with it, no cuss words, don't step on others' conversations, don't transmit on a freq that a local repeater or municipal service uses, etc.)



uncledon said:


> Couple of weeks ago I was working on simplex and came across a couple of guys talking on the radio. I could hear both of their conversations really clear. When I spoke to them they could hear parts of my conversation and they informed me that they were talking on a repeater and that I needed to set my tone correctly in order to talk with them. While I was trying to figure out the tone, they left.


Look up repeaters in your area (http://www.repeaterbook.com). If they're open, that usually means anyone can talk on them. You'll also see which direction the offset is (+ or -) and what the tone frequency is. Look in the manual for your radio for programming info. If your radio can be programmed by Chirp (free software - google it), you can have it automatically program your radio with local repeaters. It's a big time-saver.



uncledon said:


> So how come I could hear them clearly, but they could not hear me? I have many questions like this.


This is basic duplex repeater stuff. Most repeaters receive on one frequency and you transmit on another. You might receive on 145.625 but the offset might be negative which means you'll be transmitting 600KHz lower at 145.025. So if you were transmitting on the frequency you were hearing them, they might have been able to hear you if your power was sufficient to reach them. But you weren't using the repeater because you were transmitting on the wrong frequency. So you could hear them at the full strength of the repeater (usually several hundred watts with an antenna mounted pretty high up) but the power and elevation you were transmitting at would be much less capable so they had trouble hearing you.



uncledon said:


> Maybe I need to print out a repeater frequency list for each area that I travel so that I will know the local frequencies and tone that people are talking. Does anyone simple talk on simplex any more?


Meh. Not really. Yeah, there are simplex frequencies (see here) but most people use repeaters because you can reach more people and it's a whole lot more clear.



uncledon said:


> I also am interest in talking on 10 meter but a lot of people do not have multi-band radios. Mine is an Yaesu 857D mobile unit which gives me that ability to talk on all ham frequencies, however I am limited by my license to 10 meter, 6 meter, 2 meter and so on.


2M and 70CM are usually pretty active with local repeaters. I haven't experimented with 6M or 10M yet.



uncledon said:


> This is why I would like to talk on the radio and why I am interested in finding an Elmer. Regards.


Your best bet would be programming some repeaters and talk to local folks. They'll be able to hook you up with local suppliers, answer antenna questions, etc. That said, I'm not opposed to talking with people here if there's interest.


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## uncledon (Mar 1, 2013)

BKT, thanks for your words of wisdom. I do have my radio set up with the standard offset frequency and I have gone as far as setting the tone for each repeater. It appears to me that the repeaters are owned by clubs and those club members only want to talk to club members. I will keep trying to see if I can break through. I normally wait for a break in the action and then state my call sign. I have not been able to racket jaw long enough to ever repeat my call sign during a conversation but always conclude conversation with my call sign. I found that it is easier in New Mexico to get people to talk to you. In that state all the repeaters are linked to talk to the different areas of the state. In Texas we are limited to a repeaters range. I guess I need to find a club to join and hopefully will find one with an Elmer that loves to show his knowledge. I am West of Fort Worth. If anyone whats to meet up on the radio, please let me know. Thanks again for your advice BKT.


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## bkt (Oct 10, 2008)

What you describe is a little different from what i see up here. There are several repeaters. Some are networks covering a large area 70 miles or more and some are smaller covering only 20 miles. But all of them are open for anyone to use.

The other thing you can do is explore other areas of the country (or the world) with echolink.

Look for my PM, by the way.


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## zombieresponder (Aug 20, 2012)

uncledon said:


> So how come I could hear them clearly, but they could not hear me? I have many questions like this.
> 
> Maybe I need to print out a repeater frequency list for each area that I travel so that I will know the local frequencies and tone that people are talking. Does anyone simple talk on simplex any more?
> 
> ...


My local repeater requires a + offset and a tone of 100hz. Recently, we had some _really_ bad weather and tornadoes. I tried to call in to net control and couldn't access the repeater. It took me a while to figure out that somehow the CTCSS tone had been turned off in my radio. To put it simply, if your rig isn't outputting the tone, it doesn't exist as far as the repeater is concerned. Anyone listening on the repeater input frequency will be able to hear you just fine.

Edit: forgot to mention I just bought a FTM-400 myself. If I get my jeep fixed today, I might manage to get it installed.


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