Attention all Yaesu FTM-350 owners - let's petition Yaesu!

[Moleculo]

Is this statement true?

<<If you mean directly with the FTM-350 via the radio's serial port (i.e. not off the Internet or from another radio with a TNC, etc), then NO APRS program will work.

By comparison with the Kenwood APRS radios, the Yaesu radios have a serious design flaw/oversight: The Yaesu radios DO NOT allow external programs to interact with their internal TNCs. They only do APRS with their own front panel display and keyboard.

The only computer program that works with the Yaesu radios is their own memory configuration utility.

As a result, NO computer-based APRS software will work with the Yaesu radios.
>>>

Well, not really. I'm not aware of anyone that has gotten the serial data that comes out of the APRS modem to work with any APRS software. This is either an oversight by Yaesu or they just want it to work that way. Basically, you can't access the internal TNC from external software. However, you can use the serial port with other software or TNCs and you can see or read the data stream coming out, so the statement isn't entirely correct.

 

[jcalbano]

Access to Internal TNC

Just spoke to Yaesu about access to intenal TNC like Kenwood so that available software programs (like APRS Point) can be used.

The radio is programmable so that capability is possible in a future update.

So, now its not possible to send messages from the now available software programs to the TNC to RF.

They will never devlop the own APRS Software.




Ronald P. Fortin
Amateur Tech Support
Amateur Products Division
Yaesu Amateur Radio
Vertex Standard USA, Inc. | 10900 Walker St. | Cypress, CA 90630 r.fortin@vxstdusa.com | 714.827.7600 EXT: 1511 | FAX: 800.552.8613

You can always use APRS.FI if you want to track radios. Also, operators have used APRS Point in Server Mode to track radios.