Yaesu FTM-350 lock-up problems

[Skysho]

I couldn't find that ability either.

You could use the mini stereo to mini mono adapter and feed your speaker wiith the side you want to hear. Then you'd hear your main from the speaker and the sub from the head, but the main would still come over the control head. Then you could use the TRX mute and that would silence the sub band when the main is active. I keep a short mini stereo extension cable and plug into my trucks stereo (line in) and use the the balance to bring down the volume of the sub band. The full audio is in the cab works great as long as my spouse isn't along.

 

[doctordave]

Good - I'll try using the stereo/mono adapter as you've described...had actually been wondering about that when I found it in the box. Has the audio glitch returned at all, even for a moment, since you performed the reset? I'm gonna go ahead and try the reset later today.

Curiously, I talked with a ham out West who picked up a 350 two weeks back - and he has had no issues whatsoever - despite heavy use daily. Also touched base with a few hams who had weird, spontaneous re-booting issues on the first few days of use - and then no further troubles.

 

[Skysho]

The unit has been flawless since the first hiccup. I have basically kept the aprs on the sub band and transmitting when the radio is operating.

 

[doctordave]

Today, while simply sitting on a repeater frequency, the radio powered itself down & became unresponsive for over an hour - then suddenly became functional again. Disconnecting the power did not resolve the situation. Also, the right-side audio remains scratchy and weak - particularly when using an external speaker....and this was not corrected by conducting a full reset. I spoke to Yaesu tech support & they were fantastic to deal with - but had no solutions....and they suggested sending it in for bench testing. I decided to just return the radio after having it for only 1 day. Unfortunate. Hope Yaesu gets these issues solved.

 

[Wise87]

Sorry to hear about the problems you were having doctordave. My 350R will arrive tomorrow and I have my fingers crossed. I will be looking out for all the issues members have posted so far. Who did you get your radio from? Had they reported issues from other customers? I plan on running the radio in the house continuously all weekend before I attempt a vehicle install.

 

[Moleculo]

The radio has not locked up for a while now, no matter what I do. It's left on yesterday and is again today. I don't know if it's related, but I accidentally reset the two nights ago. I didn't do it by using the reset procedure, but I did it by accidentally hitting the "Clone RX" button when I was working too quickly. I wonder if a simple reset solved this problem? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[NY ESU]

We're all crossing them with you! Thanks.

 

[Wise87]

moleculo
I received my radio early this morning and I tested out the APRS feature and been talking on a few of the different repeaters in the area. I will follow suite of what you reported and see if I can duplicate any of the problems you reported. Audio sounds great on both the front and rear speakers and I can easily swap between the two. All I can say is WOW, this radio is incredible. I love the display and the menu interface is pretty simple once I ran through them a couple of times. I’m going on 7+ hours of messing with this rig going through all the menus and options, I feel drained now. A quick nap should fix me right up. I’m currently running it indoors and plan a vehicle install this weekend if all goes well.
Dan

 

[Moleculo]

Cool, I hope you don't run into any issues! Feel free to write up your own review if you like.

 

[Wise87]

Cool, I hope you don't run into any issues! Feel free to write up your own review if you like.

I don't think I can do as great of job as you have but I can checkout issues that others report. I still can't get over how easy the interface is on this rig. I'll post in another section because I know your using this topic to track issues.

 

[doctordave]

Wise87,

Any freezes or glitches with your 350 rig, thus far? I shipped mine back to the vendor and am just using a 7900 in my car for now. I'm very hopeful that only certain radios have issues - and it's not a widespread thing. If enough people have had good success with this radio, I'll likely jump back into the water.

 

[doctordave]

Moleculo,

Radio still trouble-free today?

 

[Wise87]

Wise87,

Any freezes or glitches with your 350 rig, thus far?

So far so good. I left it running all night with APRS running and it's still going strong. One thing I did change in my settings is the APRS distance, I set it to 30 miles.

 

[Moleculo]

Moleculo,

Radio still trouble-free today?

Yesterday was trouble free, with 144.390 APRS running on the right side, beaconing every 10 minutes and 146.52 on the left side. No lockups.

Last night I racked my brain trying to figure out what the combination of settings was that it locked up under. If you recall, I had accidentally reset my radio a few days ago. Then I remembered that when it locked up, not only did I have the left side on 2m, but it was also set as a memory channel. So before I went to bed, I programmed 146.52 in as a memory on the left side, left it monitoring and went to bed.

This morning when I got up, the radio was locked up. It was also receiving APRS packets on the right side when it locked. It may be coincidental, but this combination might be the right one. I'm running it like this all day today to see if it will do it again.

 

[doctordave]

Well, hopefully we'll get to the bottom of these issues & find some fixes that don't involve a trip to the Yaesu repair shop. I sent my radio back to the vendor, because it was powering down/losing responsiveness at times (even despite pulling the power) and the right audio was persistently scratchy/low. I have a replacement 350 coming next week - am hoping the next one is issue free.

I have talked to some hams who have been enjoying their 350s completely without trouble for 1 week+....so there may simply be some production quality control issues and not a systemic problem with the firmware/hardware. Beyond these technical hurdles, it certainly is a fantastic radio.