How to Program a Ham Radio — Handhelds, Mobiles and HF Rigs

Somebody hands you a handheld radio. You have the frequency of the local repeater written on a scrap of paper, and forty minutes later you still cannot get into it. The manual assumes you already know the words. The video is twenty minutes long and the part you need is thirty seconds of it.

These guides are the other thing. One page per radio family, every step written out in ordinary English, and — the part manuals leave out — what the screen should show when you have done it right, so you can tell whether you are in the right place before you carry on. Handhelds first, and HF rigs below them, where the same forty minutes gets spent on a menu three times the size.

Pick your radio

Handhelds

The radio in your pocket. 2 meters and 70 centimeters, repeaters and simplex.

Mobile radios

Rigs built for a dash bracket or a shelf, on the VHF and UHF bands. Real knobs, a detachable head, and usually a data side — APRS, D-STAR, packet — that a handheld does not have room for.

HF & base radios

Base and portable rigs for the HF bands, where the menus get deep and the settings start interacting with each other — plus the VHF and UHF base stations that work the same way.

The steps people actually get wrong

A manual will tell you what the buttons do. It will not tell you which step catches everybody out, because the person who wrote it has never watched somebody fail at it. These are the ones that come up again and again, collected from every radio covered here.

• HS4 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  The release is part of the procedure, not an afterthought — Ailunce's own step says to release the two keys when RES shows.
• HS4 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  If you have just run Method 1, the radio is on. It has to be off before this begins. And be sure you want this one: it takes the channels with it.
• HS4 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  Releasing at 1BAND is a required action, not a convenience. Nothing has been reset at this point — the radio is waiting for the next step.
• DJ-500 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Six digits, always. 146.940 is 1 4 6 9 4 0. There is no decimal key to look for, and a number the radio cannot use is rejected with an error beep rather than a message.
• DJ-500 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The dial moves this value in whatever step size item 07 STEP is set to. If the offset you want will not appear, set 07 to 5 kHz first, then come back — 0.600 and 5.000 both land cleanly on a 5 kHz step.
• DJ-500 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Deleting a channel starts exactly the same way and ends by holding B instead of C. Two seconds on the wrong key, from the same screen, is the difference between storing this repeater and erasing whatever was already there.
• DJ-500 — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  1 changes the kind of tone. The dial changes the tone itself. Miss the first and you will be turning the dial through a list the radio is not going to send.
• DJ-500 — Set the receive tone
  Set this on a repeater channel and you will only hear the repeater if it sends a tone back. Plenty do not.
• DJ-500 — Set the offset direction and amount
  The dial steps this value by whatever item 07 STEP is set to, and the factory setting is 12.5 kHz. If 0.600 will not come up, set 07 to 5 kHz first — then 0.600 and 5.000 both land exactly.
• DJ-500 — Set the squelch
  00 is not off in the useful sense — it holds the squelch open, so the radio hisses continuously. The factory setting is 3, which is a sensible place to come back to.
• DJ-500 — Name a memory channel
  Naming only works in channel mode. In frequency mode item 12 has nothing to attach a name to.
• DJ-500 — Name a memory channel
  This is the other menu — the two-item one you can only reach while the radio is starting up. FREQ shows the frequency and the channel number, CH shows the number alone, and only NAME shows what you just typed.
• DJ-500 — Delete a memory channel
  Hold B and the channel is deleted. Hold C, from this same screen, and the channel is written instead. There is no confirmation prompt for either one.
• DJ-500 — Turn off dual watch
  This is the step people trip over. A second press does not bring dual watch back; it swaps which single band you are on. Press it once more.
• DJ-500 — Factory reset
  INIT puts your settings back to factory and keeps every channel you programmed. FACT wipes the settings and the channels both. Almost everybody who says factory reset means INIT.
• DR-06T — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Check which mode you are in now, because it decides what the storing keystroke below does. The M icon is the reliable tell — no M and no C means you are in the VFO. The two-digit field beside it usually holds the channel number but not always: it shows the squelch level while that screen is up.
• DR-06T — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Your radio came set to the standard offset for its band, so most people can leave the amount alone. Do not use TS/DCS to come out of here: the very next step counts presses of TS/DCS, and starting a step ahead lands you on tone squelch instead of a plain transmit tone.
• DR-06T — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Stop at T. With the T icon alone the radio sends the tone when you press PTT and receives normally, which is what a repeater wants. One more press adds SQ and shuts your speaker until the tone comes back.
• DR-06T — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The flashing and steady M is the only warning you get before overwriting. There is no confirmation screen. 100 channels, numbered 0 to 99.
• DR-06T — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  Be careful which key you use. CALL is the one to avoid on a DCS screen in particular — Alinco documents it there as setting a DCS deviation option, and that option is itself stored in a memory channel. V/M switches between VFO and memory mode, and TS/DCS moves the tone setting on another step.
• DR-06T — Set the receive tone
  This is the decode tone. Set it on a repeater that does not send a tone back and the radio will sound completely dead while getting out perfectly well.
• DR-06T — Set the offset direction and amount
  The manual calls this the F key in this section. There is no key marked F on this radio — F is the icon that appears after you press FUNC, and FUNC is the key it means.
• DR-06T — Set the offset direction and amount
  Press FUNC again while you are in here and the dial jumps in 1 MHz steps instead, which is faster and much easier to overshoot. That range is far wider than any repeater needs — an unnoticed digit here puts your transmitter somewhere you did not intend.
• DR-06T — Set the squelch
  Higher settings keep the radio quieter but start losing weak signals. Just past where the noise stops is the right answer, not as high as it will go.
• DR-06T — Change the transmit power
  High power shows NO icon — an empty space where the power icon goes means full power, not a missing setting, and the radio arrives that way. Watch the F icon too: the repeat presses only step the power while F is showing. A CALL press after it has cleared puts you in CALL mode instead, where the dial will not change frequency or channel.
• DR-06T — Listen on the repeater's input
  This puts you on simplex on the repeater's OUTPUT frequency, which is not the same thing as reverse. Reverse listens on the input. This listens where you already were.
• DR-06T — Name a memory channel
  Program the channel first. Alinco says twice that the tag setting will not appear in the list until memories have been programmed, so on an empty radio it simply is not there.
• DR-06T — Name a memory channel
  67 characters are available including the letters and digits. If you want to start over, CALL wipes everything you have typed so far.
• DR-06T — Name a memory channel
  The book gives two different lists for getting out of this one screen — the Parameter Setting page says PTT, FUNC, MHz and TS/DCS, and the tag page itself leaves MHz off. FUNC is on both, so use that. FUNC leaves the mode — Alinco's rule is any key OTHER than SQL and the microphone UP and DOWN keys, and SQL is specifically one of the keys that keeps you IN. But FUNC also puts the F icon on the display, and on this radio F plus one more key is the layer that stores, deletes and scan-skips channels. Make sure the F icon has cleared before you press anything else.
• DR-06T — Delete a memory channel
  This is the step that matters. In memory mode the next keystroke deletes; in VFO mode the identical keystroke stores. Go by the M icon rather than the number beside it — that field also carries the squelch level when the squelch screen is up.
• DR-06T — Delete a memory channel
  No confirmation screen, no are-you-sure. And there is a second problem the book leaves you with: its scanning chapter describes this identical keystroke — FUNC, then this key, in memory mode — as setting the memory SKIP flag rather than deleting, with the same repeat-to-undo structure. Both cannot be true. A flashing M icon is the best sign the channel is gone; the 10 MHz decimal point that marks a skip also lights for two unrelated things on this radio. Do not go changing channels to check, though — read the next step first.
• DR-06T — Delete a memory channel
  This only works while you stay on that channel and in that mode. Change either one and the undo is gone for good, which in practice means you have about as long as it takes to realize what you did.
• DR-06T — Turn off the roger beep
  There is no ON setting here — turning the dial off TOT-OFF is what switches it on, and the number you land on becomes a limit on how long you can transmit, up to 450 seconds. So read this one and leave the dial alone unless you actually want a timer. If it is already set, it beeps five seconds before it cuts you off, and the penalty setting straight after it can then refuse to transmit for up to fifteen seconds more.
• DR-06T — Turn off the roger beep
  FUNC leaves the mode — Alinco's rule is any key OTHER than SQL and the microphone UP and DOWN keys, and SQL is specifically one of the keys that keeps you IN. But FUNC also puts the F icon on the display, and on this radio F plus one more key is the layer that stores, deletes and scan-skips channels. Make sure the F icon has cleared before you press anything else.
• DR-06T — Turn off the voice announcements
  The dimmer is DR-06T only — on the other radios in this manual it is not in the list at all, so the list ends one item earlier.
• DR-06T — Turn off the voice announcements
  FUNC leaves the mode — Alinco's rule is any key OTHER than SQL and the microphone UP and DOWN keys, and SQL is specifically one of the keys that keeps you IN. But FUNC also puts the F icon on the display, and on this radio F plus one more key is the layer that stores, deletes and scan-skips channels. Make sure the F icon has cleared before you press anything else.
• DR-06T — Turn off dual watch
  Alinco lists this among the things a memory channel stores and marks it PC programming required. There is no keystroke for it anywhere in the book — and no description of what the radio does with it either, so what you would get is not something we can tell you. Without the programming software you cannot reach it at all.
• DR-06T — Turn off dual watch
  SQL is the key that steps you ALONG the list, not out of it — Alinco's exit rule is any key other than SQL and the microphone UP and DOWN keys. FUNC is the one to use, and it leaves the F icon showing. That matters here more than anywhere: the very next step presses V/M, and V/M with the F icon up is the store, delete or scan-skip keystroke rather than the mode key. Wait for the F icon to clear before you go on.
• DR-06T — Turn off dual watch
  V/M toggles, so press it until you can SEE the channel number — from the VFO you would get a band-wide VFO scan instead of your channels. On the hold: the scanning chapter says more than one second and less than two, while the front panel table says the scan starts within one second, so watch for the scan to start rather than counting. Any key except the microphone UP and DOWN keys stops it.
• DR-06T — Lock the keypad
  The microphone's UP and DOWN keys still change frequency and channel, so this lock on its own does not stop a microphone swinging on its hook from moving you off channel. The microphone has its own lock switch for exactly that, listed on its own key table, and that is the one to use.
• DR-06T — Factory reset
  Hold FUNC down while you press PWR — this is the hold-and-press layer, not the press-then-press one. Pressing FUNC and releasing it before touching PWR is a different layer of the radio entirely.
• D878UV — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Zones are not optional on this radio the way memory groups are on a Baofeng. A channel has to live in one, and a channel in a zone you never select is a channel you will never find again.
• D878UV — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Do this before anything else. The rest of the menu changes shape when you do — the tone settings simply are not there while the channel is still digital, which is why people conclude this radio cannot do CTCSS.
• D878UV — Set the squelch
  Five steps, not the ten a Baofeng gives you, and it is under Radio Set rather than Chan Set because it applies to the whole radio rather than one channel.
• D878UV — Listen on the repeater's input
  Talk Around makes the radio transmit on the repeater's OUTPUT frequency, so two of you can talk directly on the frequency you were both already listening to. It does not let you hear the repeater's input. Reverse is for finding out whether you can work someone direct; Talk Around is for actually doing it once you know you can.
• D878UV — Name a memory channel
  The manual notes this only works in channel mode, not VFO. If Name will not accept anything, check you are not sitting in VFO.
• D878UV — Delete a memory channel
  It deletes the channel you are CURRENTLY ON. There is no channel picker — so make sure the radio is sitting on the one you mean before you go into the menu.
• D878UV — Turn off the roger beep
  This is the closest thing to a roger beep on the radio, but it fires at the START of a call rather than the end, and only you hear it. Nobody on the far end is hearing a beep from you.
• D878UV — Turn off dual watch
  Bold means it transmits. There is also a dedicated key on the radio that swaps which side is main, which is easy to press by accident in a pocket — so if the radio has started using the wrong channel and you changed nothing in the menu, that key is the likely culprit.
• D878UV — Lock the keypad
  Locking the keypad does not lock the knobs, and the channel knob turning in your pocket is the more common problem of the two. If a locked radio still changes channel, Knob Lock is the one you missed.
• D878UV — Factory reset
  This is the whole game. A reset takes your zones, your talkgroups, your contact list and every channel with it. With a saved codeplug that is twenty minutes; without one it is your whole setup, and if it came from somebody in your club you are asking them for it again.
• D878UV — Factory reset
  Set the time zone properly rather than clicking through it. The manual warns that skipping it gives you wrong timestamps afterwards, which matters if you are logging or using APRS.
• BF-F8HP Pro — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Direction and Offset are two separate settings and both have to be right. Setting the amount without the direction leaves you transmitting on top of the repeater's own output, which sounds like nothing happening.
• BF-F8HP Pro — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  Tx CTCSS and Tx DCS are different settings sitting near each other in the same list. CTCSS is a tone and is what almost every repeater in the United States uses; DCS is a digital code and is not interchangeable with it. Setting the wrong one gets you nowhere and looks identical from the outside.
• BF-F8HP Pro — Set the offset direction and amount
  This is the part that wastes people's time. Offset and Direction are not missing from the Program Channel list when you cannot find them — they are simply not shown while the radio is in channel mode. Switch to frequency mode and both appear.
• BF-F8HP Pro — Set the squelch
  Off does not mean quiet — it means the speaker never closes, so you hear hiss constantly. It is the setting you want while hunting for a very weak station and the last one you want in the car.
• BF-F8HP Pro — Listen on the repeater's input
  Do not leave it on. While reverse is active you are transmitting on the repeater's output frequency, which is the one thing on the band guaranteed to annoy everybody at once.
• BF-F8HP Pro — Name a memory channel
  Channel Name only exists in the Program Channel list while the radio is in channel mode. In frequency mode it is not there at all — there is no channel yet to name.
• BF-F8HP Pro — Delete a memory channel
  Read the number twice before you confirm. There is no undo, and the channel you are deleting is the one shown here, not the one you were listening to.
• BF-F8HP Pro — Lock the keypad
  A short tap of this same key is Reverse, not lock. If your frequency has jumped by the offset instead of locking, you did not hold it long enough.
• BF-F8HP Pro — Factory reset
  Reset All is the one that takes your channels with it. If you have spent an evening programming repeaters and you are only trying to undo one setting you cannot find, Reset only VFO is almost certainly what you want.
• UV-5R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The decimal point puts itself in after three digits. Do not go looking for a decimal key — there isn't one.
• UV-5R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Five digits, with the leading zeros. Typing 6 does not mean 600 kHz — it means 6 MHz, and it will put you on entirely the wrong frequency with no warning.
• UV-5R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  This is the step everyone misses. The UV-5R stores receive and transmit as two separate saves into the same channel. Skip the second one and the radio will hear the repeater perfectly and never key it up — which looks exactly like nobody wanting to talk to you.
• UV-5R — Set the offset direction and amount
  Leading zeros matter. 6 is not 600 kHz, it is 6 MHz.
• UV-5R — Factory reset
  Forty, not thirty-seven. A great many cheat sheets and forum posts put reset at 37 — on this radio 37 is RPT-RL, the repeater tail revert setting, and changing it does nothing you would notice. If you have been told 37, you have been told wrong.
• UV-5R — Factory reset
  ALL is the full wipe: every menu setting AND every saved channel, back to a blank out-of-the-box radio. Your repeaters are gone. If you did not program them from CHIRP and keep the file, they are gone for good and you are typing them all in again by hand.
• UV-82 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The two manuals genuinely disagree about which key. Try the one for your radio first and the other if nothing happens. You cannot change a tone, an offset or the band from channel mode, so this step is not optional.
• UV-82 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  This ships ON, and with it on the manual says the reverse function and the saving of duplex channels are both disabled. Skip this and the two saves below will not work, with no error message to tell you why.
• UV-82 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Baofeng is explicit that programming has to be done on the A display. There is no key marked A/B on this radio. Try the upper PTT bar first on a Baofeng UV-82 — that is what its own book says — and EXIT first on a BTECH UV-82HP. Do not use EXIT on a Baofeng: in that book EXIT is what drops you back into channel mode, which is the one state nothing will stick in.
• UV-82 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Only three decimal places can be typed. The manual's own example rounds 145.6875 up to 145.6880 to get it in.
• UV-82 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Neither manual shows how this value is keyed in — only the range and the two typical figures — and there is no decimal point key on this radio, so expect to arrow to it rather than type it.
• UV-82 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Busy channel lockout rides along on that list. If menu 23 BCL happens to be on when you store, the channel will refuse to transmit whenever somebody else is on the frequency, and the only sign is a beep.
• UV-82 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The same channel number both times. Saving into a channel that already has something in it changes only the transmit frequency and the transmit tone — which is exactly the half you are missing. This is the step people skip.
• UV-82 — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  In channel mode the tone items do nothing at all. You can open menu 13, scroll to a tone, press MENU, and the channel will be exactly as it was. The two manuals disagree about which key to hold while powering on, so try one and then the other.
• UV-82 — Set the receive tone
  The two manuals genuinely disagree about which key. Try the one for your radio first and the other if nothing happens. You cannot change a tone, an offset or the band from channel mode, so this step is not optional.
• UV-82 — Set the offset direction and amount
  Both of these items are on the list the manual says channel mode ignores.
• UV-82 — Set the offset direction and amount
  Neither manual shows how this value is keyed in, and there is no decimal point key on this radio, so expect to arrow to the figure rather than type it. The field steps in 10 kHz and accepts anything in range without complaint.
• UV-82 — Change the transmit power
  How many levels you get depends on which radio you have. Baofeng's UV-82 manual gives this item two, HIGH and LOW. BTECH's UV-82HP manual gives it three, HIGH, MID and LOW.
• UV-82 — Change the transmit power
  This one does not stick. The manual is explicit: the power stored in the channel is not changed, so moving to another channel or switching modes puts it straight back. It also does not work at all while dual watch is on. Held down for two seconds, the same key locks the keypad instead.
• UV-82 — Listen on the repeater's input
  A quick press does reverse. Holding the same key for two seconds starts the scanner instead. And if nothing happens at all, check menu 7 — the manual lists the reverse function among the things dual watch disables, and dual watch is on from the factory.
• UV-82 — Name a memory channel
  Setting these to NAME on channels that have no names gives you a blank line where the frequency used to be. Put them back to FREQ or CH if that happens.
• UV-82 — Delete a memory channel
  Menu 27 next door is the one that STORES a channel. Same kind of screen, same range of numbers, one digit apart, and neither asks whether you are sure.
• UV-82 — Turn off dual watch
  With TDR ON, the manual says the reverse function, the saving of duplex channels, and the # power shortcut are all unavailable. If one of those has stopped working for no visible reason, this is the first place to look.
• UV-82 — Turn off dual watch
  Menu 34 only does anything while menu 7 is ON; its definition says so outright. So these are two settings for two different situations: menu 7 OFF while you are programming, or menu 7 ON with menu 34 set to A or B while you are monitoring. Baofeng's own Menu Definitions section describes item 34 as display priority rather than transmit selection, and BTECH gives only that reading — but three passages in Baofeng's book call it a transmit lock, including the procedure, so that is how this page treats it.
• UV-82 — Lock the keypad
  A QUICK press of the same key is the transmit power shortcut in channel mode. Hold it properly or you will change your power and wonder why nothing locked.
• UV-82 — Factory reset
  If what comes up says A/B–BP instead of RESET, you have typed 40 — the UV-5R's number. Back out and try 41. Getting this wrong is harmless, which is the good news; getting it right the other way round, on a UV-5R, is not.
• UV-82 — Factory reset
  No confirmation screen and no undo. ALL takes your channels with it.
• K4 — Connect the radio to a computer
  The value is live as you turn it. There is no save and no cancel on this radio, so if you are only looking, note the number before you unlock it. Elecraft does not print which baud rate the radio ships on, so set it deliberately rather than assuming.
• K4 — Connect the radio to a computer
  That asymmetry is real and the radio enforces it: FSK keying over a serial port can only be done on DTR, never on RTS, and asking for it on RTS gets you an error. Also worth knowing when things go wrong — if the transmit lamp is on all the time, a stuck DTR or RTS line configured as PTT is the first thing Elecraft tells you to check.
• K4 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  Easy to forget, and the symptom is a radio that appears to be transmitting normally with nothing coming out.
• K4 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  Tapping the XMTR knob itself also cycles which of its jobs is selected. Check what is highlighted before you turn it, because in a voice mode the same knob is microphone gain.
• K4 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  Look at the color of the button box before you turn. Blue means you are adjusting the main receiver and green means the sub. Tapping B SET or SUB RX first is how you aim at the sub deliberately.
• K4 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  You can also tap the filter graphic itself to cycle them. Which direction it cycles is not something we will assert: Elecraft's manual gives the order as 3 2 1 in one place and 1 2 3 in another. Watch the number.
• K4 — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  Speech modes only. In CW this one does nothing at all, and the radio will tell you the control does not apply rather than explaining why.
• K4 — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  Read that again: while you are setting the notch, the VFO A knob is the notch control and not the frequency control. Elecraft does not print how you hand the knob back to tuning, so we are not going to invent a keystroke for it. Expect to have to work that out on your own radio, and do it before you need it in a pileup.
• K4 — Work a DX station that is running split
  It is a hold. The manual's procedural section says hold and its summary list just says the switch enters split without saying which gesture, so follow the procedure. That fourth indication — the meters moving across — is deliberate: Elecraft describes it as a clear reminder to the operator about whether split is in effect.
• K4 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Two different things are both called store here. STORE in square brackets is the physical switch that opens the window; STO in the window is the touch button that actually writes. Only the second one saves anything.
• K4 — Run the antenna tuner
  Elecraft's manual is inconsistent about what value to set. The menu listing says AUTO; two of the radio's own error messages say ENABLED. We are reporting both rather than picking one — set it to whichever your radio actually offers.
• K4 — Run the antenna tuner
  If you try to tune while it is bypassed the radio refuses and tells you to hold this switch first. It is a hold, not a tap — the tap on the same switch is the tune.
• K4 — Set the CW keyer speed and weight
  In a voice mode those same two labels are microphone gain and compression. Turning the knob without checking what is boxed is how people end up with their mic gain at maximum.
• QRZ-1 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The radio shows both bands and only works on the one the arrow marks. This is the most common reason a freshly programmed channel appears to do nothing.
• QRZ-1 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  This one frequency is shared. There is no separate transmit tone and receive tone on this radio; item 1 decides which direction the tone at item 2 is used in.
• QRZ-1 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  This same hold is the first step of DELETING a channel too. What separates them is the key you press at the end.
• QRZ-1 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  # stores. ✱ deletes. Same screen, two keys apart, no confirmation either way.
• QRZ-1 — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  The list starts at 62.5 Hz, which is lower than the 67.0 Hz most tone charts begin with. Scroll carefully — the first entry is not the one you are used to seeing first.
• QRZ-1 — Set the offset direction and amount
  Item 16 has no number-key shortcut — the shortcuts stop at item 10 — so this one has to be scrolled to. And the field is in megahertz: 600 kHz is 0006000, not 600.
• QRZ-1 — Delete a memory channel
  ✱ deletes and # stores. The screen looks identical up to this point, and there is no confirmation. If you meant to save a channel and pressed ✱, you have just emptied the one you were looking at.
• QRZ-1 — Turn off dual watch
  The manual describes item 25 as allowing reception on bands A and B simultaneously — which is the same sentence as item 5 in different words. Nothing in the book tells the two apart, so set both and you are covered whichever one your radio actually uses.
• QRZ-1 — Lock the keypad
  The manual does not say which of the four the radio leaves the factory on, so check it rather than assuming. If you want a radio that genuinely cannot transmit from inside a bag, you need All or PTT — the other two leave the transmit button live.
• QRZ-1 — Factory reset
  There is no shortcut key for item 26 — the number keys only reach items 1 to 10 — so this one has to be scrolled to.
• QRZ-1 — Factory reset
  The manual's description of this item is garbled — the middle clause is missing a word, what separates All from Full is never said, and it points at a page number that was never filled in. So treat anything other than VFO as capable of emptying your memories, and read your channels out to the programming software before you press MENU.
• IC-705 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  Note the extra level: MOD Input. On the IC-7300 these items sit directly under Connectors, so somebody moving between the two radios will look for this in the wrong place. The default here is already USB, which is the opposite of the 7300 — its DATA MOD ships on ACC and has to be changed.
• IC-705 — Connect the radio to a computer
  A4 is the IC-705's address. The IC-7300 is 94h. If you have set software up for a 7300 before and copied the settings across, this is why it will not connect. Software that has no IC-705 entry can often be made to work by telling it a different Icom and matching the address here — Icom says as much in its own manual.
• IC-705 — Connect the radio to a computer
  Some logging and digital software reads that unsolicited traffic as a reply and loses its place. If the software keeps timing out or losing frequency sync, try OFF here before anything else.
• IC-705 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  You want ALC barely moving. Real ALC action on a digital mode means the audio is overdriving the transmitter, and the resulting splatter is something everybody else hears and you do not.
• IC-705 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  A dot appears on the IF filter indicator once you have moved PBT. That dot is your reminder — a passband left shifted from last night is the usual reason a signal sounds thin the next morning.
• IC-705 — Turn on noise reduction
  The tap only toggles it. If you have been running noise reduction at whatever it was last set to and concluding that it makes everything sound underwater, this hold is the control you never found.
• IC-705 — Turn on the noise blanker
  Icom says this outright: with very strong signals, or noise that is not really pulse-type, the blanker distorts what you are listening to. Their own fix is to turn it off or shallow the DEPTH. So a blanker left on out of habit genuinely costs you.
• IC-705 — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  Auto Notch works in SSB, AM and FM. Manual Notch works in SSB, CW, RTTY and AM. So on CW there is no automatic notch at all, and on FM there is no manual one — if the option you want is missing, check what mode you are in before assuming the radio is faulty.
• IC-705 — Run the antenna tuner
  The AH-705 is for a long wire, and the wire has to be long enough: more than about 30 metres — 98 feet — on 160 metres, and more than about 7 metres — 23 feet — on 80 metres and up. A short wire is not a tuning problem, it is outside what the tuner can do.
• IC-705 — Run the antenna tuner
  If it cannot get under 2:1 within fifteen seconds the indicator goes out and the tuner bypasses itself — the wire is then connected straight through. That is the radio telling you the antenna is out of range, not that the tuner is broken.
• IC-705 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  This deletes the memory channels and, on this radio, the D-STAR repeater list with them. Icom recommends backing up to a microSD card or saving with the CS-705 software first — the repeater list is preloaded at the factory and you will not get it back from the radio itself.
• IC-7000 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  This one catches people. That switch is for 9600 baud packet, which takes its audio straight in and out of the DATA pins and bypasses the ordinary audio path. Leave it on and your FT8 audio is going somewhere you did not intend. It should be off for every sound-card mode.
• IC-7000 — Connect the radio to a computer
  Set mode is opened by pushing the volume knob in. There is no key marked MENU that does it, and this is where most people stall on this radio.
• IC-7000 — Connect the radio to a computer
  70h, not 94h and not A4. Those are the IC-7300 and the IC-705. Software set up from somebody else's Icom notes will not find this radio, and the symptom is silence rather than an error.
• IC-7000 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  The manual is blunt about the upper limit: never apply more than 0.6 volts peak to peak. Above that the radio can no longer hold the bandwidth of a 9600 baud signal, and it says in as many words that you may interfere with other stations.
• IC-7000 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  Two things worth knowing. Changing a filter's width clears any PBT shift you had set on it. And PBT should be back at centre when there is nothing to reject, because left off-centre it quietly makes everything sound wrong — hold the PBT/M-ch/RIT control for a second to centre both.
• IC-7000 — Turn on noise reduction
  More is not better. Turn it too far and the processing starts eating the signal along with the noise — voices go hollow and underwater, and weak CW disappears entirely. Icom's own advice is to set it for maximum readability, not minimum noise, and those are two different settings.
• IC-7000 — Turn on the noise blanker
  It does nothing at all in FM or WFM. If you are on 2 meters FM wondering why the button seems dead, that is why.
• IC-7000 — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  Start narrow. A wide notch removes the interference and a chunk of the voice with it, and the result sounds muffled in a way that is easy to blame on the other station.
• IC-7000 — Work a DX station that is running split
  This is the setting that saves you from the classic split disaster. Let go of XFC a moment early while you are turning the dial and you move your RECEIVE frequency instead — losing the DX station just as they come back to you. Split lock, used with the dial lock, stops the dial doing anything except while XFC is held.
• IC-7000 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  That one control is three controls wearing a hat. While the green light is on it is the passband tuning; with it off the inner ring becomes the memory channel selector. Skip this and the knob you are about to turn will be shifting your filter instead of picking a channel.
• IC-7000 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Hold it, do not tap it. A tap does nothing at all, which reads exactly like a radio that has ignored you.
• IC-7000 — Run the antenna tuner
  The AH-4 has to be re-tuned every time you change frequency, even slightly — it is a tuner on the end of a wire, not a matching network with a memory. And never transmit into it without an antenna connected: the manual says in capital letters that this damages both the tuner and the radio.
• IC-7000 — Set the CW keyer speed and weight
  The quick Set mode shows different items depending on the mode you are in. Key Speed is simply not there unless you are already in CW, so the setting looks missing when it is only hidden.
• IC-7000 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  This clears everything programmed into the memory channels and puts every Set mode item back to its default. It is a genuine wipe, and the manual says so before it says anything else.
• IC-7100 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  Check the sideband before you go any further. This radio picks USB above 10 MHz and LSB below it, and LSB-DATA is a perfectly valid mode it will happily sit in. On 40 meters that means DATA comes up on lower sideband, which is not what FT8 wants. Touch SSB again to toggle it to USB.
• IC-7100 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  There is a matching ACC MOD Level, and turning that one down while your audio is coming in over USB does exactly nothing. Adjust the one that matches what DATA MOD says.
• IC-7100 — Connect the radio to a computer
  Icom's instruction is in capitals in the manual: never connect the transceiver to a PC until the USB driver installation has been completed.
• IC-7100 — Connect the radio to a computer
  Leave it alone unless you have two Icoms on the same bus. Change it and every piece of software you own has to be told the new number. Note that this one setting is shared — the USB port and the round REMOTE jack use the same address and the same baud rate.
• IC-7100 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  Icom prints no ALC target for data mode anywhere in either book. The usual rule applies — a small amount of ALC deflection, well short of the top — but that is our advice rather than theirs, so watch your own signal.
• IC-7100 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  Icom prints two different keys for this in two different places — MENU in the procedure, and a second push of MIC/RF PWR in the panel description. Both are in the same book. Either is worth trying; neither will hurt anything.
• IC-7100 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  The label on that key tells you what is selected now, not what pressing it will do. Icom's own screen callouts say so: when SHARP is selected, touch SHARP to select SOFT. Read it as a status light rather than a button.
• IC-7100 — Turn on noise reduction
  The same key does both, one after the other — the first push closes the adjustment, the second turns the function off.
• IC-7100 — Turn on the noise blanker
  It works in SSB, CW, RTTY and AM only. In FM, wide FM and D-STAR it does nothing at all.
• IC-7100 — Turn on the noise blanker
  DEF held for a second puts whichever setting you are on back to factory, which is the way back if you have made things worse.
• IC-7100 — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  The three-way cycle is only SSB and AM, and only if both halves are enabled. Two Set mode items decide that — Function, then [NOTCH] Switch (SSB) and [NOTCH] Switch (AM), each of which can be set to Auto, Manual or Auto/Manual. Both ship on Auto/Manual. Set one to Auto and the manual notch is simply not in the cycle any more, which is worth knowing before you conclude the key is broken.
• IC-7100 — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  Icom's procedure has you turn the manual notch on first — push NOTCH once or twice until MN shows, then hold. Whether the hold does anything with MN off is not something either book states.
• IC-7100 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Two things at once here. A tap does nothing — it has to be a hold. And Icom's own note: if you do this on a channel that already has something in it, the previous contents are overwritten, with no prompt. The key immediately to the right, M-CL, erases the channel on exactly the same one-second hold. One key-width of finger error is the difference between saving a channel and destroying it.
• IC-7100 — Run the antenna tuner
  The radio transmits to do this. Make sure an antenna is connected and you are on a frequency you can legally use before your thumb rests there.
• IC-7100 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  That second warning is the real one. All Reset wipes the D-STAR repeater list, and the repeater list is what DR mode runs on — so afterwards the radio cannot do DR mode at all until you reload it. Icom's own recommendation, marked recommended in their manual, is to save everything to an SD card or to a PC with the CS-7100 software first.
• IC-7300 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  This is the one. It leaves the factory on ACC, meaning the radio expects your audio to arrive on pin 11 of the round accessory socket on the back — not over the USB cable you just plugged in. Leave it on ACC and WSJT-X will key the radio and transmit silence. Everything looks perfectly configured and nobody hears you.
• IC-7300 — Connect the radio to a computer
  Leave it at 94h unless you have two Icoms on the same bus. Change it and every piece of software you own has to be told the new number.
• IC-7300 — Connect the radio to a computer
  This is a real source of trouble with some logging and digital software — the unsolicited traffic arrives in the middle of a conversation and gets read as a reply. If your software keeps losing track of the frequency or throwing timeouts, try OFF here before you touch anything else.
• IC-7300 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  The target is ALC barely moving. Any real ALC action on a digital mode means the audio is overdriving the transmitter and you are splattering across the band — which you cannot hear and other people can.
• IC-7300 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  Opposite directions narrows the passband. Turn both the same way and you shift the whole passband sideways instead — which is a different and also useful thing, but not what you want when you are trying to shut somebody out.
• IC-7300 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  That little dot is the tell that PBT is doing something. If a signal sounds oddly thin or muffled and you cannot think why, look for the dot — PBT left set from an hour ago is a very common cause.
• IC-7300 — Turn on noise reduction
  A tap only toggles it on and off. The level control is behind the one-second hold, and a lot of people never find it — so they run noise reduction at whatever it was last left at and conclude it makes everything sound underwater.
• IC-7300 — Turn on the noise blanker
  There is a dedicated NB key on the front panel too, so once you know you want it you do not need the FUNCTION screen at all.
• IC-7300 — Work a DX station that is running split
  This is the good part: XFC lets you listen on your transmit frequency while you set it. So you find out whether the frequency you picked is clear before you call, rather than after everyone tells you.
• IC-7300 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  If BLANK is not showing, that channel already has something in it and saving will overwrite it without asking.
• IC-7300 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Held, not tapped. A tap does nothing, which reads as the radio ignoring you.
• IC-7300 — Run the antenna tuner
  Tuning keys the transmitter. Do not do it on top of a QSO already in progress.
• IC-7300 — Run the antenna tuner
  If it cannot find a match, TUNE disappears altogether and the tuner bypasses itself. That is the radio telling you the antenna is outside its range — not a fault.
• IC-7300 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  Memory channels, filter settings, the lot. The manual's own words are that you will need to rewrite your operating settings. There is no undo, so this is the one to be certain about.
• IC-9700 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  This is the one. DATA MOD ships on ACC, meaning the radio is listening for your audio on the eight-pin DIN socket on the back. Plug in a USB cable, select USB-D, key up from WSJT and you will transmit a clean carrier with nothing on it. Nothing on the display tells you. And note that the socket actually marked DATA is not an audio socket at all — it is a serial port with three pins, ground, transmit and receive.
• IC-9700 — Connect the radio to a computer
  On ON, the radio announces every front-panel change on the bus and accepts changes from it in return. That unsolicited traffic arrives in the middle of a conversation and some logging software reads it as an answer to something else.
• IC-9700 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  It is a percentage of that band's maximum, and the maxima are different. On 2 meters the full scale is 100 watts, on 70 centimeters 75 watts, and on 23 centimeters 10 watts. So fifty percent means 50 watts, 37.5 watts and 5 watts depending on which band you are on. There is no single wattage number to remember.
• IC-9700 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  A plain touch of TX PWR LIMIT does something different — it toggles the function on and off. So if you tap it on the way to holding it, you have just switched the limit off. Hold from the start.
• IC-9700 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  Note which knob. Almost everything on this radio is the MULTI knob and this one is the main tuning dial. And BW is not the reset. Putting a filter back to its factory width is a one-second touch of DEF, the same soft key Icom uses for reset-to-default all over this radio. Do not go looking for a reset by holding BW.
• IC-9700 — Turn on noise reduction
  Holding the key switches the noise reduction on as a side effect of opening the menu. You cannot look at the level without engaging the function, so if you only wanted a peek, expect the audio to change.
• IC-9700 — Turn on the noise blanker
  SSB, CW, RTTY and AM only. In FM and the digital modes it does nothing at all — Icom's mode line for the Noise Blanker is those four and no more.
• IC-9700 — Turn on the noise blanker
  As with the noise reduction, holding the key switches the function on as well as opening the menu.
• IC-9700 — Turn on the noise blanker
  Pushing the knob closes this one, where EXIT closes most other things on this radio. Same knob, different job depending on what is on screen.
• IC-9700 — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  Holding the key force-selects the manual notch, even if you were happily using the automatic one. So there is no way to open this menu to adjust the width without losing the automatic notch.
• IC-9700 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  MULTI here. In the memory-to-memory copy procedure the destination is chosen with the MAIN DIAL instead, and Icom puts a note in the manual telling you not to use MULTI there. Two similar-looking jobs, two different knobs.
• IC-9700 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Two things. It must be a hold — a tap does nothing and there is no feedback to tell you that. And the confirmation is negative: you are watching for a word to disappear rather than for anything to appear. Icom's own note is that new content overwrites whatever was already there, with no prompt.
• IC-9700 — Set the CW keyer speed and weight
  In SSB, in the data modes and in FM, AM and DV that slot is microphone gain; in RTTY it is the twin peak filter and in DD it is TX inhibit. This is not a case of the setting being hidden — it genuinely is not there.
• IC-9700 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  Everything goes: memory channels, filter settings, all of it. And the D-STAR repeater list goes with it, which is what the DR mode runs on, so the radio cannot do DR mode afterward until you reload the list from Icom's website or from your card.
• ID-52A — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Do this before anything else. The TONE item does not appear in the QUICK menu at all unless the radio is in FM or FM-N, and on a radio bought for D-STAR it is easy to be sitting in DV without having noticed.
• ID-52A — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Two different places for one job. QUICK sets whether a tone is sent; MENU sets which tone. Setting only the first is the usual reason a repeater ignores you.
• TH-D75 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  On most repeater segments you will not need to touch this at all. Automatic Repeater Offset sets the direction from the frequency — the manual prints the whole US table, and 146.940 gets a minus by itself. Set it by hand only when the repeater is unusual.
• TH-D75 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  This is the Kenwood trap. TONE sends a tone and lets you hear everything. CTCSS sends a tone and also silences your radio unless a matching one comes back. For getting into a repeater you want Tone. Choosing CTCSS here is the single most common reason a TH-D75 sits silent on a repeater that everybody else can hear.
• TH-D75 — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  Each press moves you on: Tone, then CTCSS, then DCS, then Cross Tone, then off. Tone is the first one and the factory default. Go one press too far and you are on CTCSS, which does something quite different.
• TH-D75 — Set the offset direction and amount
  It is not a menu item. People look for it in the menu, do not find it, and conclude the radio cannot do it.
• TH-D75 — Change the transmit power
  F then MENU, not MENU on its own — MENU alone opens the menu mode. It is an odd pairing to remember, and it is the fastest thing on the radio once you have.
• TH-D75 — Name a memory channel
  A/B is the delete key while you are typing, not a confirm — it removes the character at the cursor. ENT is what saves. Get those two the wrong way round and you will wipe what you just typed.
• TH-D75 — Delete a memory channel
  MENU here, not MODE. MODE opens the edit menu for renaming and grouping; MENU is the one with Clear Memory on it.
• TH-D75 — Turn off dual watch
  Squelch, tone and offset are all set per band on this radio. So a setting that appears not to have worked has very often been applied to the other side.
• TH-D75 — Lock the keypad
  The volume control is not covered by the key lock. If your radio keeps ending up silent or deafening in a bag, this is the setting you actually wanted.
• TH-D75 — Factory reset
  Memory channels included. The date and time survive, and nothing else does. If you programmed this radio by hand rather than from software, that is your whole evening.
• TM-D750 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  SHIFT only goes forward: plus, then minus, then −7.6 MHz on the TM-D750E only, then off, then round again. There is no back. If you overshoot, keep pressing. And note this is not a menu item on this radio — hunting for offset direction in the menu is a wasted trip.
• TM-D750 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  This is the Kenwood trap, and it is the single most common reason one of these sits silent on a repeater everybody else can hear. TONE cycles Tone, then CTCSS, then DCS, then Cross Tone, then off. Tone sends a tone and lets you hear everything, which is what a repeater wants. CTCSS sends a tone and also mutes your radio unless a matching tone comes back. One press too far and the audio stops.
• TM-D750 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The guide says M.IN stores the displayed frequency into the memory channel selected using the ENC control, but does not say whether you pick the channel before or after pressing the keys. The channel number is on the screen either way — look at it before you commit, because writing over a channel you wanted is not undoable.
• TM-D750 — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  Keep pressing and you walk past it: Tone, CTCSS, DCS, Cross Tone, off. Tone is the one a repeater wants — it sends a sub-audible tone with your transmission and leaves your receiver wide open. Stop there.
• TM-D750 — Set the receive tone
  CTCSS does two jobs at once on a Kenwood — it sends your tone AND mutes your receiver unless a matching tone comes back. Tone only does the first. If you want into a repeater and nothing else, you want Tone.
• TM-D750 — Set the offset direction and amount
  It cycles one way only: plus, minus, −7.6 MHz, off. The −7.6 MHz step exists on the TM-D750E and not on the TM-D750A, so an A owner sees three positions and an E owner sees four. Overshoot and you go round again — there is no back.
• TM-D750 — Set the squelch
  Just past the point where the noise goes is the right place. Every further click makes the radio deafer, and turning it well clockwise will lose you weak stations entirely — including the ones you most want to hear. Fully counterclockwise opens it up completely.
• TM-D750 — Change the transmit power
  The key is labeled LOW but it cycles all three: medium, then low, then high, then round again. So the first press off high takes you to medium, not to low, and it takes three presses to get back where you started.
• TM-D750 — Listen on the repeater's input
  Do not forget this one. Leaving Reverse on means you are transmitting on the repeater's output frequency, which is both useless and inconsiderate to anybody listening. The icon is your only warning, so it is worth learning where it sits.
• TM-D750 — Turn off the voice announcements
  Manual means it only speaks when you press the VOICE key. Auto1 and Auto2 mean it announces things as you change them. Off means silence — and the VOICE key marking only appears on the panel display when guidance is set to one of the other three, so if you turn it off and later wonder where the key went, this is why.
• TM-D750 — Lock the keypad
  Frequency Lock only stops the frequency changing — the rest of the keys still work. Key Lock stops the keys. If you locked the radio and it still did something you did not want, check which of the two this is set to before assuming the lock failed.
• TM-D750 — Factory reset
  Read the four properly. VFO Reset clears the VFO and what hangs off it. Partial Reset clears everything EXCEPT your memory channels and DTMF memory channels — that is the safe one. PM Reset only touches programmable memory. Full Reset wipes everything you have customised, memory channels included. Full is not the thorough version of Partial, it is the destructive one.
• TM-D750 — Turn on the built-in GPS
  GPS Locked only appears the first time it acquires after you power on or switch the GPS on, so it is not a permanent status line — and the GPS icon on this radio does not blink, so do not wait for a flash that never comes. The icon shape is what tells you whether it is positioning.
• TM-D750 — Set up APRS with your callsign
  This is the APRS callsign and nothing else. D-STAR keeps its own at menu 610 and DV Gateway keeps a third at 651. Filling one in does not fill in the others, and that is the single most common reason a new TM-D750 beacons happily but will not pass a D-STAR repeater.
• TM-D750 — Set up APRS with your callsign
  EMERGENCY is on that same list, one turn of the knob away from the ordinary choices. Selecting it puts an emergency flag on your position for everyone receiving you. Know it is there so you do not select it by accident, and never select it as a test.
• TM-D750 — Put APRS on the right band and speed
  1200 is what APRS runs at almost everywhere. 9600 exists for the places that use it and will make you completely inaudible to a 1200 bps network — the packets go out, they just mean nothing to anyone. The display carries a different icon for each, which is how you check at a glance.
• TM-D750 — Put APRS on the right band and speed
  Off (Ignore) means transmit regardless of what else is on frequency. On a shared APRS channel that makes you the station stepping on everybody, and it is very hard to notice you are doing it. Leave this on Busy unless you have a specific reason.
• TM-D750 — Send your position automatically
  0.2 minutes is twelve seconds. On a shared national channel that is antisocial, and on a channel with a digipeater on it your packets are being repeated as well, so you are using several times the air time you think. For a car, two minutes is generous; for a station that does not move, half an hour is plenty.
• TM-D750 — Send your position automatically
  This is the important one. Total Hops goes up to 7, and setting it high does not get you heard further — it gets your packet duplicated across a whole region by every digipeater that hears it. One or two hops is the normal, courteous setting almost everywhere. Seven is how you get a polite email.
• TM-D750 — Send and receive APRS messages
  Do not leave this at zero. An instant automatic reply collides with the tail of the message that triggered it and with any other station replying at the same moment. A short delay costs you nothing and stops your radio from being the one that transmits on top of people.
• TM-D750 — Send and receive APRS messages
  All means every packet the radio decodes, which on a busy channel is a beep every few seconds and will drive you out of the car. Message Only is the setting most people want — it beeps for text addressed to you and stays quiet for the position reports.
• TM-D750 — Send and receive APRS messages
  Infinite means the notification stays until you clear it, which is a poor idea while driving — the frequency display is what you need to be able to glance at. Menu 573 sets how much of the screen it takes, and One Line is the least intrusive of the three.
• TM-D750 — Register your callsign for D-STAR
  This is the trap on this radio. Menu 500 is APRS, menu 610 is D-STAR, and menu 651 is D-STAR over the internet gateway. Filling in one does not fill in the others, and a radio with 500 set and 610 empty will beacon perfectly on APRS while every digital transmission goes nowhere.
• TM-D750 — Switch the radio into D-STAR
  MODE moves you between the three groups but not within them. It will take you to DV or DR but the guide is explicit that it does not switch FM against NFM or DV against DR. FM against NFM is menu 102. What picks DV against DR is not documented in Kenwood's published guide, so we are not going to invent it — the display icons are different for the two and will tell you where you have landed.
• TM-D750 — Set your D-STAR message and auto reply
  Note the number — 61A, not 620. On (Voice) sends a recorded voice message back rather than just an acknowledgement, which is a genuinely useful thing to leave running when you step away from the radio. Menu 312 is where the voice message itself is recorded.
• TM-D750 — Set your D-STAR message and auto reply
  Code Squelch opens on a two-digit code set at menu 621; Callsign Squelch opens only for a callsign you nominate. Both are useful for a group on a busy channel and both are excellent ways to sit in silence wondering why the radio has stopped working. If a D-STAR channel has gone quiet, check here before anything else — the display carries a separate icon for each.
• TM-D750 — Get on D-STAR with no repeater in range
  They are not the same thing. Terminal Mode puts you on the D-STAR network as if you were sitting on a repeater — you route to reflectors and to other callsigns, and nothing goes out over the air. Direct Mode carries your D-STAR traffic to a gateway server over the internet. Choose deliberately; the menus underneath each only apply to one of them.
• TM-V71A — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  There is a microphone shortcut for this, but it is not switched on out of the box: Kenwood's frequency direct entry page says one of the microphone PF keys must first be programmed as ENTER, and none of the four arrives that way. Menus 509 to 512 are where you would do it.
• TM-V71A — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Come all the way out before the next step. Inside the menu a bare TONE press is the BACK key, not the Tone function — F is what leaves. Most people never touch this item anyway: the radio already defaults to 600 kHz on 144 MHz and 5 MHz on 430 MHz, which is what nearly every repeater uses. The range is 00.00 to 29.95 MHz in 50 kHz steps, and whatever you set here is also what Automatic Repeater Offset will apply.
• TM-V71A — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  T, not CT. One press gives you T for Tone, which is the one that opens a repeater. Two presses gives CT for CTCSS, which is tone squelch and does a different job. Three gives DCS. Keep pressing and it comes back round to nothing.
• TM-V71A — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Kenwood says to press any key other than the Tuning control and F, and WHICH key matters. REV turns the Reverse function on, and Reverse is one of the things a memory channel stores — you would save a channel that transmits where the repeater talks. TONE moves the tone type on a step. VFO or MR would throw you out of the mode you are in. Pressing the BAND SEL for the band you are already on selects that band, which it already is, so nothing changes.
• TM-V71A — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  If that channel already had something in it, the old contents are gone. There are 1000 channels shared between the two bands, so there is rarely a reason to land on top of one you wanted.
• TM-V71A — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  Stop at T. Each further press moves you along to CT, then DCS, then off. CT is tone squelch — it decides what you hear, not what you send — so a radio left on CT sends no tone at all and the repeater stays shut.
• TM-V71A — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  This is the step people skip — rotating to the number is not accepting it, and F here throws the change away. Pick the accepting key with care too: REV turns on the Reverse function, which a memory channel stores, and TONE moves the tone type on a step. Pressing BAND SEL for the band you are already on changes nothing.
• TM-V71A — Set the receive tone
  Any key except the Tuning control and F accepts it, but avoid REV — it turns on the Reverse function, and that IS stored in a memory channel, which is exactly what this procedure's closing tells you to do next.
• TM-V71A — Set the offset direction and amount
  No sign means simplex. On an E type radio operating on 430 MHz there is an extra stop at −7.6 MHz, which is a European repeater spacing and will not appear on an Americas radio.
• TM-V71A — Set the offset direction and amount
  Two things about ARO that catch people. It does not only pick the direction — Kenwood's own description says it selects an offset direction AND activates the Tone function according to the frequency. And it is switched ON from the factory, so on a new radio it may already have done both before you touched anything. It only exists on K and E type radios, and it will not function at all while Reverse is switched on.
• TM-V71A — Set the squelch
  The left control belongs to band A and the right one to band B, so turning the wrong one does nothing at all and looks like a broken knob. Kenwood's panel description says clockwise opens the squelch and counterclockwise tightens it, which is round the opposite way from most radios — so go by the hiss rather than by the direction.
• TM-V71A — Change the transmit power
  High only exists on K and E type radios. On other versions the key walks between medium and low and there is no H to be found — that is the radio, not a fault.
• TM-V71A — Listen on the repeater's input
  ASC listens by dipping the receiver for a moment every three seconds, so you will hear a small regular interruption. That is the function working, not a fault. Press REV to get out of it.
• TM-V71A — Name a memory channel
  Store something in a channel first. Menu 200 does not exist on a radio with no memories in it, so on a brand new rig it looks like the feature is missing.
• TM-V71A — Name a memory channel
  One opening press for the whole name, then ONE press per character — not two. REV moves the cursor left and LOW moves it right, and PF1 deletes the character you are on.
• TM-V71A — Name a memory channel
  Kenwood never spells out a separate done press for a memory name. What the character entry page does say is that F exits Menu mode while TONE cancels the setup and goes back to the menu selection — so F is the one to use and TONE is the one to avoid. Check it landed: in memory mode a press of the Tuning control flips the display between the name and the frequency.
• TM-V71A — Delete a memory channel
  Get this right now. The radio will clear whatever channel was selected when you powered it down, and after the next step you have no chance to change your mind about which one.
• TM-V71A — Delete a memory channel
  Press F instead and you walk away with the channel intact. That is the escape hatch if you got to this screen by accident.
• TM-V71A — Turn off the roger beep
  Even with this off, the radio still beeps in two situations: one minute before Auto Power Off shuts it down, and when the time-out timer cuts your transmission. Those two are not switchable.
• TM-V71A — Turn off the roger beep
  If people tell you that you keep getting cut off mid-sentence with a beep, this is why, and it is doing its job — it exists to stop you sitting on a repeater.
• TM-V71A — Turn off the voice announcements
  MANUAL needs somewhere to ask from. You have to program one of the microphone PF keys as VOICE first, using menus 509 to 512, or MANUAL leaves the radio permanently silent.
• TM-V71A — Turn off the voice announcements
  There is no zero here. To silence it you turn menu 003 off rather than winding the volume down.
• TM-V71A — Turn off dual watch
  There are two separate markers and they mean different things: one shows the band you are operating — the one the knobs and the menu act on — and the other shows the band you will transmit on. They are usually the same band and they do not have to be.
• TM-V71A — Lock the keypad
  Separate from the panel lock, which comes last on this page. If the thing getting pressed in your car is the microphone swinging on its hook, this is the setting rather than the panel lock.
• TM-V71A — Factory reset
  PART is almost always the one people actually want. It fixes a radio somebody has fiddled with while leaving the work you did programming it.
• TM-V71A — Factory reset
  Do NOT press F here. Everywhere else on this page F is how you leave the menu; at this confirmation screen Kenwood lists it as the key that CANCELS the reset. Stay where you are.
• TM-V71A — Factory reset
  Press TONE at the confirmation to step back, or F to cancel outright. Once you press the Tuning control the second time there is no undo.
• TM-V71A — Factory reset
  Kenwood blocks the key route while the radio is in remote control or repeater mode, and in repeater mode no transceiver function works at all. There is a second blocker printed against the MENU route: with the Channel Display function or the Key Lock function on, the reset cannot be performed. Key Lock comes off with a one-second press of F. Channel Display is the awkward one, and the book gives two different keys for it — the Channel Display pages say LOW plus Power ON, twice, and the troubleshooting table says REV plus Power ON. Try LOW first.
• TS-590SG — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  There is no separate USB-DATA legend — the mode field keeps saying USB and the only difference is the DATA indicator. That indicator is also what lights when the Morse decoder is running, so it cannot by itself tell you which one you are in.
• TS-590SG — Connect the radio to a computer
  These are two independent settings for two independent ports. Changing 67 does nothing to a USB connection and changing 68 does nothing to a serial one. Work out which cable you are actually using before you start turning knobs.
• TS-590SG — Connect the radio to a computer
  This is the trap. Menus 67 and 68 are the only two items in the hundred that need a power cycle — Kenwood footnotes them and nothing else. Change the baud rate, exit the menu, watch the software still fail to connect, change it back, and you can lose a genuinely irritating amount of an evening. Power cycle first, then judge.
• TS-590SG — Set the drive level for digital modes
  Set the one that matches menu 69. Turning the ACC2 level down while your audio is arriving over USB does exactly nothing, and it is an easy hour to lose.
• TS-590SG — Set the drive level for digital modes
  This is the one that catches people, and it is worth reading twice. Kenwood's design is that the microphone and the external audio mute each other. If you key up with the front panel SEND key or the ACC2 send line, you get the microphone. If you key up with the ACC2 PKS line, the TX1; command, or a programmable key set to DATA SEND, you get the external audio. The factory default for menu 70 is FRONT. So out of the box, pressing SEND while in USB-DATA transmits a carrier with none of your computer's audio on it, and nothing on the display tells you.
• TS-590SG — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  CW runs 50 Hz to 2500 Hz with 500 Hz as the default and a shift range of 300 to 1000 Hz, default 800. FSK gives you four widths, 250 to 1500, and no shift adjustment at all. SSB-DATA gives the full width range with a default of 2500 Hz — wide open, which is what you want for FT8 and far too wide for PSK31.
• TS-590SG — Turn on noise reduction
  The two have different scales. With NR1 on you are setting a level from 1 to 10, default 5, and that level is remembered separately for SSB, FM and AM on one hand and CW and FSK on the other. With NR2 on you are setting a correlation time from 2 to 20 milliseconds, default 20. Same gesture, different units, and the only way to know which you are adjusting is what was on the screen when you started.
• TS-590SG — Turn on the noise blanker
  Kenwood's own warning is that raising this degrades the radio's intermodulation performance. It is not a free control — turn it up until the noise goes and no further.
• TS-590SG — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  The manual notch and this cannot both be running. Kenwood only prints it in a footnote in the In-Depth Manual — the auto notch filter and manual notch filter cannot be used at the same time — and does not say which one wins, so expect your carefully placed manual notch to stop doing anything. They are alternatives, not a stack — pick one. Auto notch is SSB only, and because it works at the IF stage it pulls your S meter down along with the interference and takes a little of your wanted signal with it. That is the trade, and it is often worth it: notching out a strong beat lets the AGC recover and can lift a buried SSB signal into the clear.
• TS-590SG — Work a DX station that is running split
  A leading zero is how this radio spells minus. Enter 5 and you go up 5 kHz; enter 05 and you go down 5 kHz. Kenwood does not describe what the display shows while you are still typing — only that SPLIT stops blinking once the entry completes — so do not count on the screen to tell you which way you went. The digits live on the band keys — 1.8 is 1, 3.5 is 2, and so on up to 50 for 0.
• TS-590SG — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  CLR at this point backs out without writing. That is the only clean escape in this procedure.
• TS-590SG — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Kenwood prints two different ways of typing a channel number in two different places — one says just press the digit keys, the other says press ENT first. Both are in the same book and it does not reconcile them. The knob always works; try the typing on your own radio before you rely on it.
• TS-590SG — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Whatever was in that channel is gone, with no prompt and no confirmation. Kenwood's own note is blunt: do not press M.IN again after entering memory scroll mode, because pressing it overwrites the channel you selected with the current VFO. Browsing and writing are the same key.
• TS-590SG — Run the antenna tuner
  If you have an external AT-300 on ANT1, choose ANT2 to use the internal tuner — the internal one is bypassed automatically whenever an external tuner is on ANT1. And an external tuner only works on ANT1; wire it to ANT2 and it does nothing.
• TS-590SG — Run the antenna tuner
  There is no prompt and no warning. Holding this key puts you on the air at once, in CW. Kenwood does not say what power it tunes at, so assume it is whatever you have set. Make sure the antenna is connected and you are on a frequency you are allowed to transmit on before your thumb lingers. Pressing AT again stops it.
• TS-590SG — Run the antenna tuner
  Two failure noises, both in Morse. An SWR above about 10 to 1 gets you SWR sent in code and the tuner bypasses itself — that is a bad antenna, not a tuner problem, and tuning again will not help. Failing to finish within about twenty seconds gets you the character 5; press AT to stop it. Tuning also gives up on its own after about sixty seconds.
• TS-590SG — Set the CW keyer speed and weight
  The default is off, which means break-in is active. Kenwood's own step three tells you to key the paddle and listen to the sidetone, so following the book as printed transmits. On an antenna, on a busy frequency, at whatever power you last used.
• TS-590SG — Reset the menu to factory settings
  This is the moment that matters. VFO RESET puts the two VFOs back to 14.000.00 MHz on USB and leaves everything else alone — your memory channels, all your menu settings in both banks, the antenna tuner presets, the antenna selection, the auto mode table and the adjustment values all survive. FULL RESET erases all of it.
• MA1 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  With the microphone in your hand, the ENT key puts you into direct frequency entry and you can key it in instead.
• MA1 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The range here runs from 0.00 all the way to 99.95 MHz, which is far wider than the Kenwood this radio is modeled on. That is generous rather than useful — a wrong digit here puts your transmitter a long way from where you meant it.
• MA1 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  This list is CTCSS frequencies while 607 is set to CTCSS, and DCS codes if you set 607 to DCS. The book gives two different counts for the DCS list — the menu table says 106 codes and the feature list at the front says 104 — so do not go hunting for a specific one at the end. Check the display afterwards: there is an icon that appears only when a transmit tone is set, and that icon is worth more than anything either of us believes about the menu.
• MA1 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The blinking number is the radio waiting. If you walk away from this screen the channel is not saved.
• MA1 — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  DCS.R is reverse DCS, which is a different thing again and is not what any ordinary repeater wants. CTCSS is the answer unless your repeater list specifically says a DCS code.
• MA1 — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  It is described rather than performed on purpose. You have just set the tone at 607 and 608, and the manual never says whether the TONE key is the same setting or a separate one — so pressing it now could move a setting a memory channel stores, in a direction nobody can predict from the book. If 607 and 608 do not work on the air, come back and try this route instead, one change at a time.
• MA1 — Set the receive tone
  Setting 605 and 606 tells the radio which tone to listen for. Whether it actually mutes on it is menu 602, the next step — the factory setting there is SQ, which opens on any carrier, tone or no tone. So these two on their own do not make you deaf to anything.
• MA1 — Set the offset direction and amount
  It is the pair that walks it, not REV on its own: press F, then REV, and that moves one stop. Plus, then minus, then off, then round again. A bare REV press with no F in front of it is the reverse function, which is a different setting entirely — this book says almost nothing about what reverse does, so the safe assumption is that you did not mean to press it.
• MA1 — Set the offset direction and amount
  This one arrives switched OFF on an MA1, where the Kenwood it was modeled on ships with it ON. If you are used to a Kenwood picking the direction for you and this radio is not doing it, that difference is why.
• MA1 — Set the squelch
  The left and right squelch controls are completely independent, so turning the wrong one does nothing at all and feels like a dead knob. The book's own description of which way the control turns is not reliable — it describes squelch as something you turn on and off rather than a level — so go by what you hear.
• MA1 — Change the transmit power
  That F-then-VFO step is the one people leave out, and leaving it out is expensive. Without it you store whatever the VFO happened to be holding over the top of your channel and lose its frequency, offset and tone along with everything else. The manual calls the copy a memory shift.
• MA1 — Listen on the repeater's input
  Do not leave it on by accident. On every radio that has this function, reverse means you transmit where the repeater talks and listen where it listens, so a repeater that suddenly seems dead is worth checking the icon for. This book never actually says that, which is why it is worth knowing that the icon is all you get.
• MA1 — Name a memory channel
  This is a real gap in the manual, not an omission on our part. The Kenwood this radio is modeled on has a full Character Entry page covering the cursor, the Tuning control and the keys that move you left and right. That page was not carried across. We are not going to copy those keystrokes over on the strength of a family resemblance.
• MA1 — Name a memory channel
  F is the way out everywhere in this menu. TONE steps back a level instead, which the screen labels BACK. Since the book never describes the character entry itself, check the result: pressing the Tuning control in memory mode flips the display between the name and the frequency.
• MA1 — Delete a memory channel
  This overwrites rather than empties. The channel still exists and the scanner will still stop on it — you have replaced the contents, not removed the channel.
• MA1 — Turn off the roger beep
  Fifteen levels here, where the Kenwood this radio copies has seven. If you are working from a Kenwood manual, that is one of the numbers that quietly does not match.
• MA1 — Turn off the roger beep
  If you keep getting cut off mid-sentence, this is why, and it is doing its job. Whether it beeps at you when it fires is not something this book says either way — the whole entry for 109 is one table row.
• MA1 — Turn off the voice announcements
  This step is a look, not a change. Menu 500 is a six-character text field, so pressing the Tuning control here puts you into editing the power-on message — which is not what you came for.
• MA1 — Turn off the voice announcements
  If you need a radio that reads menu items out loud — because you cannot see the display in a car, or at all — this is not one, and no accessory makes it one.
• MA1 — Turn off dual watch
  The book says this two different ways: the panel table says hold for a second, and the operating page says simply press. A plain press already has a job — it selects which band you are on — so this page uses the hold. If a press alone flips your screen, that is your radio answering the question.
• MA1 — Lock the keypad
  Separate from the panel lock, which comes last on this page. If the thing getting pressed in your car is the microphone swinging on its hook, this is the setting for it. The microphone also has its own lock key on the body, which does the same job without a menu.
• MA1 — Factory reset
  PART is nearly always what people actually want. Note that the book's description of PART also promises to preserve your PM channels, which this radio does not have — that sentence came across from the Kenwood manual this book was built from and you can ignore it.
• MA1 — Factory reset
  No undo past this point.
• TD-H3 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The radio shows both sides at once and only acts on the one the arrow is against. Program the other side and everything will look right and nothing will work.
• TD-H3 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Eight digits including the trailing zero. 446.425 is 4 4 6 4 2 5 0 0 — the manual's own example types 432.56250 as 4 3 2 5 6 2 5 0.
• TD-H3 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  This field is in megahertz, not kilohertz. 600 kHz is 00.60000, not 600. Direction and amount are two separate items and both have to be right.
• TD-H3 — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Menu 13 is the tone you SEND, which is the one that opens the repeater. Menu 11 is the tone you listen for. The manual's own worked example gets these two the wrong way round — see the note on this page.
• TD-H3 — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  In channel mode this item is locked out. You can open it and turn the arrows and nothing at all will happen, which looks exactly like a broken radio.
• TD-H3 — Set the offset direction and amount
  Menu 23 is one of the items the manual lists as disabled in channel mode.
• TD-H3 — Set the offset direction and amount
  Megahertz, not kilohertz — 600 kHz is 00.60000. The field will take anything from 00.00000 to 69.99750, so a wrong entry is accepted without complaint.
• TD-H3 — Change the transmit power
  The manual contradicts itself about how many levels there are — the menu chapter and the display chapter describe three, while the appendix and the feature list at the front each say two. The display icon table names all three, so H, M and L is what this page uses.
• TD-H3 — Name a memory channel
  Setting these to NAME on a channel that has no name in it gives you a blank space where the frequency used to be. Set them back to Frequency if that happens.
• TD-H3 — Delete a memory channel
  The item next door, menu 25, is the one that STORES a channel — same kind of screen, same kind of number, one digit apart. Read the item name at the top before you press MENU.
• TD-H3 — Turn off dual watch
  BUSY is the setting that surprises people. You hear a station on the B side, key up expecting to answer on A, and the radio sends on B. If you have ever transmitted somewhere you did not intend on this radio, this is almost certainly why.
• TD-H3 — Lock the keypad
  The display icon table says to hold # instead. Four other places in the same manual say ✱ — the keypad diagram, the keypad lock section, and menu 22 in both the functions chapter and the appendix — so ✱ is what this page uses. If ✱ does nothing on your radio, try # before assuming the lock is broken.
• TD-H3 — Factory reset
  The manual describes this only as “Channel Reset” and nowhere says whether it empties your channels or only resets their settings. Treat it as though it empties them.
• KG-UV8D — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  On the Baofeng this is menu 13. Here it is 16.
• KG-UV8D — Set the offset direction and amount
  On the Baofeng this is menu 26. Carrying the number across from a Baofeng cheat sheet lands you in the shift-direction menu instead.
• KG-UV8D — Name a memory channel
  It is a short field, so a repeater callsign fits and a description usually does not. Use the callsign.
• G90 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  The manual is blunt about this: when you are feeding audio in through the ACC port, make sure the line input volume is high enough. Too low and the radio simply will not respond to the audio at all, which reads as a dead cable.
• G90 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  Leave this on the microphone and the radio will transmit the room instead of your computer. It is the equivalent of the Yaesu MOD SOURCE trap and it costs people the same evening.
• G90 — Connect the radio to a computer
  The manual states plainly that the G90 uses the standard CI-V instruction set. That is Icom's protocol. There is often no Xiegu entry in older software at all, and people conclude the radio is unsupported when it is simply an Icom as far as the computer is concerned.
• G90 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  The high cut is the SECOND function of the noise blanker button, so you must press FUNC first and see the F indicator light. Press NB on its own and you have switched the noise blanker instead — which is a reasonable thing to do, but not what you were trying to do.
• G90 — Turn on noise reduction
  Different job. The blanker is for pulses — ignition, power line, an electric fence. Against steady hiss it does nothing at all, which is why people try it, hear no difference, and assume it is broken.
• G90 — Turn on the noise blanker
  Without FUNC. With FUNC pressed first, this same button sets the filter's high cut instead — check the F indicator is dark before you press it.
• G90 — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  If the tone is sitting in the middle of a voice you want, neither edge will help without taking the voice with it. That is the honest limit of the radio.
• G90 — Work a DX station that is running split
  This is the second function of the AGC button. Press AGC without FUNC and you have cycled the AGC setting instead — check the F indicator is lit first.
• G90 — Work a DX station that is running split
  Easy to leave yourself listening on VFO-B and wonder why the DX station has gone quiet. If you have lost them, this is the first thing to check.
• G90 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Storing to a channel that already has something in it overwrites it without asking. There is no BLANK indicator to warn you the way there is on the Icom.
• G90 — Run the antenna tuner
  THIS HAS NOT TUNED ANYTHING. The manual says so in as many words: just opened, the tuning has not been started. This is the single most common G90 mistake — the icon is showing, so people assume the job is done, and then wonder why the SWR is still terrible.
• G90 — Run the antenna tuner
  The manual specifically asks you to do this. A tuner left in circuit on an antenna that does not need it is loss you are adding for nothing.
• G90 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  There is no one-press way to put these back to default, which is exactly why they are worth checking early and worth writing down once you find settings you like.
• FT-4XR — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  On the FT-65R this same setting is number 29 and spelled SQL TYPE. The two radios are sold alongside each other and share nothing useful about their menus.
• FT-4XR — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The same key, held twice. The first hold opens the write and the second commits it.
• FT-4XR — Set the offset direction and amount
  The direction is 31 and the amount is 30 — the list is alphabetical, so they are the other way round from the order you actually use them in.
• FT-60R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  It wants six digits. Typing 147.08 and stopping leaves the radio waiting for one more, and it will look as though nothing happened.
• FT-60R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  There is a time limit once the number starts flashing — around ten seconds. If it stops flashing before you press F/W, nothing was saved. Start the hold again rather than assuming it worked.
• FT-65R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The tone kind and the tone frequency are two separate settings in two different places. Setting only the first is why the repeater ignores you.
• FT-65R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  It is the same key held twice, not pressed twice. The first hold opens the write, the second commits it. Let go too early on the second and nothing is saved.
• FT-65R — Set the offset direction and amount
  One menu item holding three different settings. Arrowing to 24 REPEATER only gets you to the door — you still have to pick which of ARS, MODE or SHIFT you meant.
• FT-70D — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Holding a number key enters the zeros that follow it in one go — useful for a frequency like 146.000. If you start typing and change your mind, PTT cancels the entry.
• FT-70D — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The kind of tone and the frequency of the tone are two separate screens on two separate keys. Setting only SQ TYP leaves the radio sending 88.5 Hz, which is the factory value and quite often not what the repeater wants.
• FT-70D — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  If the channel already holds something, the radio asks M-WRT? first. Press V/M again only if you mean to write over it.
• FT-70D — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  CTCSS, DCS and the pager function do nothing in C4FM digital mode. If you set a tone while the radio is in DN it will look completely normal and have no effect on the air.
• FT-70D — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  That one frequency is shared by TONE, TSQL, RV TN, T DCS and D TONE. There is no separate transmit tone and receive tone on this radio — set it once and every mode that uses a tone uses that one.
• FT-70D — Set the receive tone
  This is the same stored frequency the transmit tone uses. Changing it here changes it there.
• FT-70D — Set the offset direction and amount
  This one figure is the shift for the band you are on. The range runs to 150 MHz, which is far more rope than any repeater needs.
• FT-70D — Set the squelch
  The factory setting is SQL 1, which is low. Wind it up too far and weak stations stop opening it — the point is the lowest number that gives you silence, not the highest number you can set.
• FT-70D — Listen on the repeater's input
  One key, two jobs, and only one of them at a time. The radio leaves the factory on REV, so if yours jumps to a home channel somebody has changed it. Note that the two manuals disagree about what F plus HM/RV does — the Operating Manual says it recalls the home channel, the Advance Manual says it toggles this setting — so change it here, by holding F, where there is no doubt.
• FT-70D — Name a memory channel
  If nothing happens and the radio beeps, that channel has no tag stored. Item 35 NM/FRQ sets which one you get by default.
• FT-70D — Delete a memory channel
  AMS deletes and V/M saves, from the same blinking screen. Nothing warns you which one you are about to do beyond the prompt — M-MSK? is a delete, M-WRT? is a write.
• FT-70D — Turn off dual watch
  There is no priority channel from the factory. Dual receive with nothing to watch simply does nothing, which reads as a broken feature.
• FT-70D — Lock the keypad
  The factory setting is K+D — keys and dial. The PTT switch is not included, so a locked radio in a coat pocket can still transmit. K+P or ALL is what you want for a radio going into a bag.
• FT-70D — Factory reset
  This wipes every memory channel along with the settings. Write down what is in the radio first, or read it out with the programming software, because nothing here is recoverable.
• FT-70D — Register your callsign for C4FM
  On a European FT-70DE this item is 63, not 64 — everything above item 61 shifts down one because the weather alert item does not exist there.
• FT-70D — Register your callsign for C4FM
  Only capital letters, digits, the hyphen and the slash are available, and a callsign cannot start with a hyphen or a slash. So N0CALL/M is fine; /N0CALL is not.
• FT-70D — Switch the radio into C4FM digital
  DN is the digital mode you want. VW is a wide, higher-quality voice mode that does not even appear in the list until you switch item 16 DIG VW on, and it will not reach a station that is not also in VW.
• FT-70D — Set the DG-ID so you only hear your group
  A receive DG-ID other than 00 is the single most common reason an FT-70D sits there hearing nothing on a busy digital channel. If in doubt, set receive back to 00 and leave it there.
• FT-710 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  Editing here uses the ordinary menu rules, which means the value is live and saves itself after about three seconds. There is no cancel. Note what a setting said before you change it.
• FT-710 — Connect the radio to a computer
  Waiting is how you save on this radio. That means scrolling the value to see the options has already changed the setting — there is no cancel and no escape. If you are only looking, note what it said first.
• FT-710 — Connect the radio to a computer
  BACK does not discard. Whatever you left the value on is what the radio now has.
• FT-710 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  There is a matching REAR MOD GAIN for the RTTY/DATA jack, and they are separate. Set the one that matches the socket you are actually using. And every item under MODE PSK/DATA exists again under MODE SSB, MODE AM, MODE FM and MODE RTTY — what you set here does nothing for any other mode.
• FT-710 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  In AM, Yaesu caps you at 25 watts of carrier and says so in a warning box.
• FT-710 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  Yes, the key that saves your setting is labeled RESET. A short press confirms. A press and hold wipes the shift, width, notch, contour and audio peak filter settings for the band you are on. Same key, one gesture apart, and this is the single most dangerous control on the radio. If you are nervous, use the five-second wait instead and keep your hand off that key entirely. And there is a second wipe hiding in plain sight: press and hold the STEP, MCH and DSP knob itself and it resets whichever function is on screen — centering the shift, putting the width or the notch back to default, or zeroing and switching off the peak filter. That is the same knob every step above asks you to press. Press it, do not lean on it.
• FT-710 — Turn on noise reduction
  Note the knob. The noise reduction and noise blanker levels are the two filter controls that use the FUNC knob rather than the STEP, MCH and DSP knob — the opposite of everything else on the filter ring. There is no touch route to this at all; holding the physical key is the only way in.
• FT-710 — Turn on the noise blanker
  The FUNC knob again, not the DSP knob. And as with the noise reduction there is no menu item behind it, so there is no printed default and a menu reset will not touch it.
• FT-710 — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  Short press on DSP RESET confirms. Press and hold and you have thrown away the notch, the shift, the width, the contour and the peak filter for this band. The wait is the safer habit. A press and hold of the STEP, MCH and DSP knob is the other way to lose the notch: held down, it puts the notch center frequency back to where it started.
• FT-710 — Work a DX station that is running split
  TXW is not a key on the panel. It is a tile on the function screen, in the fourth row, and it is momentary — you only hear the transmit frequency while the knob is held down.
• FT-710 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Do not leave the mode grid open — close it with a touch on a mode before you reach for V/M.
• FT-710 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  The STEP, MCH and DSP knob, not FUNC. Nearly everything on the screen is FUNC and this one is not.
• FT-710 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Same gesture as step two. This is also how you deliberately overwrite a channel that already has something in it, so if you are browsing the list rather than storing, do not reach for V/M.
• FT-710 — Run the antenna tuner
  Both of those are Yaesu's own instructions, not ours. The next step transmits.
• FT-710 — Run the antenna tuner
  The transmitter is engaged for this, immediately, with no prompt. If the antenna will not match, HI-SWR appears on the screen.
• FT-710 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  MENU CLEAR is the gentle one — it puts the setting menu back to factory and does not touch your memories. MEMORY CLEAR erases all the channels, though M-01 comes back as 7.000.000 MHz on LSB and cannot be deleted. ALL RESET takes everything, memories and menu and settings alike.
• FT-857D — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  If you would rather the display read something other than the true carrier, 036 DIG DISP shifts the number on the screen independently. That is convenient and it is also a good way to confuse yourself later — leave it at zero unless you have a reason.
• FT-857D — Connect the radio to a computer
  The factory setting is 4800 bps, the slowest of the three, and most logging and digital software expects something faster. When the two disagree the radio simply does not answer — no error, no light, nothing. This is far and away the most common reason a Yaesu will not talk to a computer. Whatever you choose here has to be typed identically into the software.
• FT-857D — Connect the radio to a computer
  One eight-pin socket on the back does three jobs, and this item decides which. If you have set it to TUNER for an FC-30, the computer is locked out. That is a real either-or on this radio.
• FT-857D — Set the drive level for digital modes
  Yaesu's own PSK31 paragraph tells you to use menu 38 for this. That is an error in the manual — 38 is DIG MODE, which chooses the mode and sideband. The drive control is 37, as the step-by-step procedure on the same page says.
• FT-857D — Set the drive level for digital modes
  This is a per-band setting, not a global one. Set 20 watts on 20 meters and 40 meters is still wherever you left it. There is no dedicated power key — but menu 057 can put power on a press of the SELECT knob if you change bands a lot.
• FT-857D — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  What this key gives you depends entirely on the mode. In SSB, AM, FM and the digital modes it is a bandpass filter with adjustable ends. In CW it is something else — a narrow peaking filter centered automatically on whatever CW pitch you have set in menu 027.
• FT-857D — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  It ships at 100 Hz. Yaesu's warning is that voice starts sounding thin above about 400, so that is the practical ceiling rather than the one the menu offers.
• FT-857D — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  If both labels say N/A, there is nothing installed and nothing to select. The options are the YF-122S for SSB, the YF-122C at 500 Hz and the YF-122CN at 300 Hz for CW, and fitting one means taking the top cover off.
• FT-857D — Turn on the noise blanker
  Do not go by the third label. Yaesu prints this row three different ways in three places — with a blank, with AUTO, and with OFF — because the C label is whatever the AGC is currently set to. The A key is always NB.
• FT-857D — Work a DX station that is running split
  Row q is the programmable row. QSPL is only the factory assignment of the B key, from menu 066. On a secondhand radio somebody may have changed it, so check the label says QSPL before you trust it.
• FT-857D — Work a DX station that is running split
  Read this twice, because it is backwards from most radios. In Yaesu's own worked example, once split is on the radio transmits on VFO A and receives on VFO B — so the frequency showing on the display is your receive frequency and you are transmitting on the other one. If you build this the way you would on an Icom, you will transmit on the DX station's own frequency.
• FT-857D — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  The B key label changes the moment you do this. Where the reference card says SKIP, it now says MCLR, and pressing it masks the channel rather than skipping it. If you are reaching for something on this row while the number is blinking, be sure which label is actually showing.
• FT-857D — Run the antenna tuner
  This step is for the FC-30 only. An ATAS-120A does not need it — stay in the menu and rotate SELECT straight on to 085 in step 4, skipping the FUNC hold at the start of it. And doing this takes the CAT socket away from your computer — see the note at the end.
• FT-857D — Run the antenna tuner
  Yaesu is emphatic about the order: do not connect the FC-30 before changing menu 020. That is their instruction, in their words, and it is printed in the middle of the procedure rather than at the top where you would see it.
• FT-857D — Run the antenna tuner
  The radio transmits a carrier to do this, with no prompt and no warning. Make sure you are on a frequency you can legally transmit on and that the antenna is connected before your thumb rests on that key.
• FT-857D — Reset the menu to factory settings
  Note what has happened there. The same seven numbers appear in both lists, but as the ones that get reset here and the ones that do not get reset with FUNC. If you glance at the manual and see a familiar list of numbers you can very easily pick the wrong key. V/M is the destructive one.
• FT-857D — Reset the menu to factory settings
  Nothing survives this. Worth cloning to another radio or writing your channels down first if there is anything in there you care about.
• FT-891 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  The manual lists the two choices without saying which suits FT8, so here is the reasoning. PSK applies a fixed tone offset set in 08-02 — 1000, 1500 or 2000 Hz. OTHERS applies whatever you put in 08-03 OTHER DISP and 08-04 OTHER SHIFT, and both of those default to 0 Hz. FT8 wants no offset at all, so OTHERS with the defaults left alone is what makes the dial reading and the published FT8 frequency the same number.
• FT-891 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  The factory default here is LSB. FT8 and the rest of the WSJT-X modes run upper sideband, so this one has to be changed — it is not already right out of the box. Leave it on LSB and your signal comes out inverted and nobody decodes you.
• FT-891 — Connect the radio to a computer
  The factory default is 4800 bps — the slowest of the four. Most logging and digital software defaults to something faster, and when the two disagree the radio simply does not answer. This is the single most common reason a Yaesu will not connect. Whatever you set here has to be typed identically into the software.
• FT-891 — Connect the radio to a computer
  Default is ENABLE. If your interface does not drive RTS, the radio can sit there waiting for a signal that never comes — and it looks exactly like a dead cable. If the speed is right and it still will not talk, this is the next thing to try.
• FT-891 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  There is one of these per mode — 16-11 for SSB, 16-12 AM, 16-13 FM, 16-14 DATA. Changing the wrong one is why nothing appears to happen.
• FT-891 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  Counter-clockwise narrows. Go too far and the station you actually want starts sounding muffled and thin — narrow only until the interference goes, not as far as it will travel.
• FT-891 — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  Default is WIDE, which is easier to aim but takes more of the wanted audio with it. NARROW is worth setting if you find the notch is muffling the voice you are trying to save.
• FT-891 — Work a DX station that is running split
  Press A/B once and you have swapped which VFO you are hearing. It is very easy to tune what you think is the transmit VFO while actually dragging your receive frequency off the DX station. Check you are back on VFO-A before you call.
• FT-891 — Run the antenna tuner
  Both halves are needed. Menu 16-15 says what is out there; TNR on FUNCTION-1 turns it on. Setting one without the other is the usual reason a newly fitted FC-40 appears to do nothing.
• FT-891 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  On the US version this cannot erase channel 01, or channels 501 through 510.
• FT-891 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  This is the destructive one. Everything goes — memories, menu settings, key assignments. Try FUNC first; it fixes most of what sends people looking for a reset, and it costs you nothing.
• FT-897D — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  036 DIG DISP shifts the number on the display independently of the actual carrier. It is occasionally useful and it is a reliable way to confuse yourself six months later. Leave it at zero unless you have a reason not to.
• FT-897D — Connect the radio to a computer
  The factory setting is 4800 bps, the slowest of the three, and most logging and digital software expects faster. When the two disagree the radio simply does not answer — no error, no light. This is the single most common reason a Yaesu will not talk to a computer. Whatever you pick here has to be typed identically into the software.
• FT-897D — Connect the radio to a computer
  One eight-pin socket does three jobs and this item decides which. If somebody has set it to TUNER for an FC-30, the computer is locked out, and nothing about the symptom points at this menu.
• FT-897D — Set the drive level for digital modes
  Yaesu's own PSK31 paragraph says to use menu 38 for this. That is a misprint — 38 is DIG MODE, which chooses the mode and sideband. The drive control is 37, as the step-by-step procedure on the same page correctly says.
• FT-897D — Set the drive level for digital modes
  Per band, not global. Set 20 watts on 20 meters and 40 meters is still wherever you left it. And if you are on the internal battery the radio has already capped itself at 20 watts regardless of what this says — which is the usual reason a power setting appears to be ignored.
• FT-897D — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  What this key gives you depends on the mode. In SSB, AM, FM and the digital modes it is a bandpass filter with two adjustable ends. In CW it is a different animal — a narrow peaking filter centered automatically on whatever pitch you have set in menu 027.
• FT-897D — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  Yaesu's own procedure calls this item 047 in that bullet, which is a misprint — you have just come from 047, and one click back is 046. The gesture is right and the number is wrong. It ships at 100 Hz, and Yaesu warns that voice goes thin above about 400.
• FT-897D — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  Two N/A labels means nothing is installed. The options are the YF-122S for SSB, the YF-122C at 500 Hz and the YF-122CN at 300 Hz, and either slot takes either kind — Yaesu notes the slots do not distinguish between filter types. Fitting one means eight screws and the top cover off, with the power disconnected.
• FT-897D — Turn on the noise blanker
  Do not navigate by the third label. Yaesu prints this row three different ways in three places — with a blank, with AUTO, and with OFF — because the C label is whatever the AGC recovery time is currently set to. The A key is always NB.
• FT-897D — Work a DX station that is running split
  Row q is the programmable row and QSPL is only the factory assignment of the B key, from menu 066. On a secondhand radio somebody may have changed it, so check that the label really says QSPL. Yaesu also does not document how to cancel quick split — the SPL key in row a is the documented way out.
• FT-897D — Work a DX station that is running split
  The B key on this row is A=B and it copies the main VFO over the sub VFO without asking. Handy when you meant it, and a good way to lose the frequency you just found when you did not.
• FT-897D — Work a DX station that is running split
  Read this twice. In Yaesu's own worked example, once split is on the radio transmits on VFO A and receives on VFO B — so the frequency showing on the display is your receive frequency, and you are transmitting on the other one. Build this the way you would on an Icom and you will transmit on the DX station's own frequency.
• FT-897D — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  One beep is not enough. The first is the key registering and the second, a moment later, is the confirmation that the data actually went in. If you only heard one, nothing was stored.
• FT-897D — Run the antenna tuner
  This step and the next are for the FC-30 only. An ATAS antenna needs neither — skip straight to the 085 step below.
• FT-897D — Run the antenna tuner
  This takes the rear socket away from your computer. See the note at the end for the way round it.
• FT-897D — Run the antenna tuner
  Yaesu is emphatic about the order and prints it in the middle of the procedure rather than at the top: do not set up the FC-30 before changing menu 020.
• FT-897D — Run the antenna tuner
  The default is OFF, and OFF means the TUNE key does nothing whatsoever. That is why the key appears dead on a radio nobody has set up. The ATAS choices are HF only, HF and 50 MHz, or all bands — and all bands needs an external diplexer to combine the two antenna sockets. If you are fitting an ATAS rather than an FC-30, this is the only menu step you need.
• FT-897D — Run the antenna tuner
  The radio transmits a carrier to do this, with no prompt and no warning. Be sure the antenna is connected and you are on a frequency you can legally transmit on before your thumb rests there.
• FT-897D — Reset the menu to factory settings
  Notice what has happened there. The same seven numbers appear in both lists — as the ones that do get reset here, and the ones that do not get reset with F. Glance at the manual, see a familiar list of numbers, and it is very easy to choose the wrong key. V/M is the destructive one.
• FT-897D — Reset the menu to factory settings
  Nothing survives this. If there is anything in the radio you care about, clone it to another FT-897D or write it down first.
• FT-900 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  The manual is specific about this: those modes need a fast turnaround between transmit and receive, and VOX gets in the way of it. Key the radio from the interface instead.
• FT-900 — Connect the radio to a computer
  This is fixed. There is no menu item for it, no way to speed it up, and software offering you 9600 or 19200 for a Yaesu is offering settings from a later radio. 4800 or nothing.
• FT-900 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  MIC GAIN is the control that sets your data drive on this radio, even though the microphone is unplugged and the audio is coming in the back. That surprises people and it is the reason so many FT-900 data signals are over-driven — the obvious control to reach for is RF PWR, and it is the wrong one.
• FT-900 — Turn on the noise blanker
  Yaesu's own instruction, in as many words. A blanker punches a hole in the receiver each time it sees a pulse, and a strong signal on frequency can set it off — so the distortion you are hearing is the blanker, not the other station. This is worth remembering before you tell somebody their audio sounds bad.
• FT-900 — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  It does nothing in FM. That is by design rather than a fault.
• FT-900 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Three seconds is not long. Miss the window and the blinking stops and you start again — which reads as the radio ignoring you. A blank frequency display here is good news: it means nothing is stored in that channel yet.
• FT-900 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Two beeps means stored. No beeps means nothing happened. And a store overwrites whatever was in that channel without asking, so the blank-display check in the previous step is the only warning you get.
• FT-900 — Run the antenna tuner
  If the split indicator is showing, press SPLIT to turn it off before you tune. Tuning while split means transmitting somewhere other than where you are listening.
• FT-900 — Run the antenna tuner
  Tap and hold are two different commands on one button, and this is where the confusion lives. Tap toggles the tuner in or out. Hold brings it in AND tunes. If nothing seems to happen when you press it, you tapped when you meant to hold.
• FT-900 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  That is a full system reset: every memory gone, every VFO cleared, every setting back to factory. There is no smaller version and no confirmation prompt.
• FT-991A — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  Yaesu's own data-mode page says PSK here, and for PSK31-era software that is right — the radio generates the tone and item 063 sets it. FT8 is different: WSJT-X makes its own tones and expects the dial to read the base frequency for the band. PSK shifts the carrier point by the PSK tone, so the dial and the software stop agreeing. OTHERS with items 064 and 065 left at 0 Hz is what keeps them lined up.
• FT-991A — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  This is the contradiction. The setup page at the back of the manual says MIC. The description of item 070 says REAR is what selects the USB jack, and the description of item 072 says 072 only does anything when 070 is REAR. Set this to MIC and the radio listens to the front microphone jack, so nothing your computer sends ever reaches the transmitter. REAR is the setting that agrees with both item definitions.
• FT-991A — Connect the radio to a computer
  The factory setting is 4800 bps, and almost nothing defaults to that any more. When the radio and the software disagree on speed the radio simply does not reply, which looks exactly like a broken cable or a wrong COM port. Change it here and set the identical number in the software.
• FT-991A — Connect the radio to a computer
  Default is ENABLE. Note that RTS is also what item 071 uses to key the transmitter for digital modes — if you have one program holding RTS for PTT and another expecting it for flow control, they will fight. If CAT is unreliable and the speed is right, this is the setting to look at.
• FT-991A — Set the drive level for digital modes
  The manual points out that reducing power this way makes the ALC meter read higher, and says plainly that this is normal and not a fault. Do not chase that reading — it is not telling you the signal is dirty.
• FT-991A — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  Clockwise makes it WIDER, and the manual is clear that you can open it past the default deliberately — worth knowing on a quiet band, and worth knowing so you can tell which way you have gone wrong when a signal suddenly sounds thin.
• FT-991A — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  Factory setting is WIDE, which is easier to aim but takes more of the voice with it. If the notch is killing the whistle and muffling the station at the same time, this is why.
• FT-991A — Work a DX station that is running split
  It is easy to lose track of which VFO you are on and tune the DX station right off your receive frequency. The LEDs are the check: you want green on A before you go any further.
• FT-991A — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  That is A▶M, the VFO-to-memory button — not the AM mode. The manual's own figures abbreviate it in a way that makes the two easy to confuse.
• FT-991A — Run the antenna tuner
  The manual asks you to listen first and make sure you are not about to transmit on top of somebody. Tuning keys the transmitter.
• FT-991A — Reset the menu to factory settings
  On the US version this cannot erase channel 01, or 5-01 through 5-10.
• FT-991A — Reset the menu to factory settings
  This is the destructive one. Menu, memories, call sign, position, CW messages — all of it. Try the MENU(SETUP) reset first; it fixes most of what sends people looking, and it costs you nothing.
• FT3D — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  If the channel already has something in it the radio asks before overwriting. Read that prompt rather than tapping through it.
• FTDX101 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  It has to be a hold. A brief press of MODE just puts you back into the mode you were in before.
• FTDX101 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  The commit here is different from everywhere else on the radio — it is a press of the MULTI knob, not the FUNC key. Touch BACK to get back to the mode screen, then press MODE to get out.
• FTDX101 — Connect the radio to a computer
  The default is 4800 bps, the slowest of the four. Most logging and digital software expects faster, and when the two disagree the radio simply does not answer — no error, no light. Whatever you set has to be typed identically into the software. The serial socket has its own separate item, 232C RATE, with the same default.
• FTDX101 — Connect the radio to a computer
  FUNC is the save. There is no discard anywhere in this menu, so if you were only looking, note the value first.
• FTDX101 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  On REAR the front panel microphone is switched off entirely in data mode. Yaesu says so in the item description. That is correct behavior and it is also why the microphone appears dead when you come back to it.
• FTDX101 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  This is the one the FT8 preset changes for you. If you have touched PRESET, this already says USB, and touching PRESET again puts it back to DATA.
• FTDX101 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  The practical cost: if you have spent a while getting the width right, a hold of SHIFT to re-center the passband may take the width with it.
• FTDX101 — Turn on noise reduction
  There is a DNR key for each receiver. The one you press applies to that band only.
• FTDX101 — Turn on the noise blanker
  One NB key per receiver, and the setting applies to that band alone.
• FTDX101 — Work a DX station that is running split
  Pressing MAIN before SPLIT is not decoration. The dials and knobs act on whichever band is selected, so if you leave the radio on SUB you will be tuning your transmit frequency when you think you are tuning your receive.
• FTDX101 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Do not leave the mode grid sitting open. Holding MODE opens it; touching a mode is what confirms the choice and returns you to the operating screen.
• FTDX101 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  This is also how you deliberately overwrite a channel that already has something in it, with no prompt. If you are browsing rather than storing, keep off that key.
• FTDX101 — Run the antenna tuner
  Both are Yaesu's own instructions. The next step transmits.
• FTDX101 — Run the antenna tuner
  The transmitter is engaged for this, immediately, with no prompt.
• FTDX101 — Set the CW keyer speed and weight
  In SSB and AM that knob is the microphone gain instead. The press is documented for SSB only, where it switches the AMC or the speech processor on and off — which of the two depends on what PROC LEVEL in the menu has the outer knob assigned to. The manual says nothing about what the press does in AM. One knob, several meanings, decided by the mode.
• FTDX101 — Reset the menu to factory settings
  MENU CLEAR is the gentle one — it puts the setting menu back to factory. Yaesu heads that procedure with the words "without affecting the Programmed Frequency Memories", so your channels are safe. MEMORY CLEAR erases the channels, though M-01 comes back as 7.000.000 MHz on LSB and cannot be deleted. ALL RESET takes the memories, the menu and everything else.
• FTM-150R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Use the DIAL knob on the side you want to program. The large digits are the main band and the small ones are the sub band, and pressing a DIAL knob swaps which side is which.
• FTM-150R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  The standard shift for your band is already in there. Change this only for a machine that does not use the normal spacing, and change it back afterwards.
• FTM-150R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  TONE ENC sends the tone and leaves your receiver alone. TONE SQL sends it and also keeps your speaker shut until the same tone comes back — choose that by mistake on a repeater that sends no tone and you will hear nothing while getting out perfectly.
• FTM-150R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  If the channel is in use, OVER WRITE? appears and you hold V/M MW once more to go through with it. The Left DIAL knob jumps ten channels at a time, which saves a lot of turning.
• FTM-150R — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  Item 34 changes its own name depending on item 33 — TONE SQL FREQ on a tone setting, DCS CODE on a DCS one. Same item, two labels.
• FTM-150R — Set the receive tone
  Set this on a repeater that does not send a tone back and it will sound completely dead while you are getting into it perfectly well.
• FTM-150R — Set the offset direction and amount
  There is no OFF here, only AUTO, minus and plus. Simplex is what you get by leaving it on AUTO on a simplex frequency.
• FTM-150R — Set the offset direction and amount
  Reverse is a toggle, so do the same three keystrokes again to turn it off before you go on the air. Left on, it puts your transmitter on the repeater's output and your receiver on its input — everything looks normal and nothing works.
• FTM-150R — Set the squelch
  Left knob for the left side band, right knob for the right side band. Turning the wrong one adjusts a band you were not listening to and looks like nothing happening.
• FTM-150R — Change the transmit power
  High is 55 watts on 144 MHz and 50 on 430; mid is 25 and low is 5. The two books print the cycle in opposite orders — the Operating Manual says high, then low, then mid, and the Advance Manual says low, then mid, then high — so count the presses on your own radio rather than trusting either.
• FTM-150R — Listen on the repeater's input
  Leave it on by accident and you are transmitting on the repeater's output and listening on its input. Nothing looks wrong and nothing works.
• FTM-150R — Listen on the repeater's input
  Choose the key first and the function second — the item has both levels. All four P keys arrive with something on them already, so whichever you take, you are giving something up.
• FTM-150R — Name a memory channel
  The Left DIAL knob moves ten channels at a time here, and the microphone's number keys jump straight to a channel — pressing 1 goes to channel 100.
• FTM-150R — Name a memory channel
  Two holds, not one — the manual has them as separate steps and the confirmation pop-up only appears after the second. A press enters a character; a hold is what finishes.
• FTM-150R — Delete a memory channel
  Nothing has gone yet. DELETE? is the confirmation.
• FTM-150R — Delete a memory channel
  Channel 001 and the home channel cannot be cleared, and Yaesu says so plainly. The home channel here means the one for the band you are on — this radio has four, one per band. Any other channel deletes normally; if one of those two will not, that is the reason, and storing something else over the top is the way round it.
• FTM-150R — Turn off the roger beep
  Go by the number and the name together. The Advance Manual's own page for this item tells you to open [23 BEEP], and item 23 is RPT SHIFT FREQ — the repeater transmit offset. Item 19 is the beep.
• FTM-150R — Turn off the roger beep
  It only fires on something coming in, never at the end of your own transmission. If it is going off unexpectedly, the tone and pager settings are what to look at.
• FTM-150R — Turn off the roger beep
  Three minutes is short. If people keep telling you that you get cut off mid-sentence, this is why, and it is doing exactly what it was set to do.
• FTM-150R — Turn off the voice announcements
  Yaesu's numbered steps put a press of the Right DIAL after the ANNOUNCE value and after the VOLUME value, and none after the language. Follow the sequence rather than assuming it is the same every time.
• FTM-150R — Turn off the voice announcements
  There is no off setting here. To silence it you set ANNOUNCE to OFF rather than winding the volume down.
• FTM-150R — Turn off dual watch
  This item is the one plain setting the manual gives a confirming press of its own — most items on this radio take none. The name is cut off on screen because it is longer than the field; the manual prints it that way too.
• FTM-150R — Turn off dual watch
  This item only does anything while item 41 is set to PRIORITY SCAN. Set on its own it looks like it has no effect, because it has not.
• FTM-150R — Turn off dual watch
  With this ON, pressing PTT during dual receive always transmits on the home channel, whatever you happen to be listening to at that moment. That is a reliable way to transmit somewhere you did not intend. OFF is the setting where PTT goes out on what you are actually hearing.
• FTM-150R — Lock the keypad
  Briefly. Hold it and the radio goes off instead, which is a memorable way to learn the difference between the two.
• FTM-150R — Factory reset
  Neither of these leaves your channels intact. If you want to fix settings somebody has fiddled with while keeping your channels, back them up to a memory card first with item 47 BACKUP, run the reset, and read them back.
• FTM-150R — Factory reset
  CANCEL is sitting right there next to OK and is the way out if you got here by mistake.
• FTM-400XDR — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Touching the line cycles the three; it does not open a list. And the amount is a different item — CONFIG 6 RPT SHIFT FREQ, adjustable from 0.00 to 99.95 MHz in 0.05 MHz steps. Both leave the factory set to whatever suits the band you are on.
• FTM-400XDR — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Each touch moves you on: NOISE, T-TX, T-TRX, T-REV, D-TRX, PRGM, PAGER. T-TX sends a tone and leaves your receiver open, which is what a repeater wants. T-TRX also silences your radio unless a matching tone comes back — one touch too far and the radio goes quiet on a repeater everybody else can hear. If SQL is not on the menu, touch BACK or FWD to change pages.
• FTM-400XDR — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  Stop on T-TX. It sends the tone and leaves your receiver wide open, which is all a repeater asks for. The next one along, T-TRX, also mutes you unless a matching tone comes back, and that is the usual reason one of these goes silent.
• FTM-400XDR — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  Yaesu's own manual disagrees with itself about the factory default here — the procedure says 88.5 Hz and the menu list says 100.0 Hz. It does not matter much, because you are setting it anyway, but do not assume the radio arrived on the tone your repeater wants.
• FTM-400XDR — Set the receive tone
  T-TRX does two jobs at once — sends your tone AND mutes your receiver unless a matching one comes back. That second half is the one that catches people. If you only wanted into a repeater, stop at T-TX instead.
• FTM-400XDR — Set the offset direction and amount
  The range goes to 99.95 MHz, which is far wider than anything you will use and easy to overshoot with a fast turn. If the number goes past where you wanted, keep turning — it does not wrap quickly at that resolution.
• FTM-400XDR — Set the squelch
  You have about three seconds. If you stop to think, the bar reverts to the volume meter and the knob goes back to changing frequency — touch SQL again and carry on. Just past where the noise dies is the right place; further clockwise costs you weak signals.
• FTM-400XDR — Change the transmit power
  The order is HI, then LO, then MD — low before medium, which is not what you expect and is easy to overshoot. HI is 50 watts, MD 20, LO 5. It leaves the factory on HI.
• FTM-400XDR — Listen on the repeater's input
  Do not leave it on. With reverse engaged you are transmitting on the repeater's output frequency, which is useless to you and unhelpful to everyone listening. The only warning is on the display, so it is worth learning where to look.
• FTM-400XDR — Name a memory channel
  Caps is a toggle, not a shift — touch it once and everything after is capitals until you touch it again. It turns orange for capitals and white for lower case. 123 switches to numbers and symbols, and the arrow keys move the cursor without deleting.
• FTM-400XDR — Delete a memory channel
  Cancel is right beside OK?. Once it is gone there is no undo — and if the channel had a name and an offset and a tone, all of that goes with it.
• FTM-400XDR — Turn off the roger beep
  This one only sounds in C4FM digital, at the end of a received transmission. Digital audio stops dead rather than fading into noise, so the beep is there to tell you the other station has finished — which is genuinely useful when you are new to digital, and irritating once you are not.
• FTM-400XDR — Turn off the voice announcements
  AUTO speaks as things change; MANUAL only speaks when you ask; OFF is silence. AUTO in a car is the point of the whole thing — it means you never look down to check which band or frequency you are on.
• FTM-400XDR — Turn off dual watch
  If DW is not on the function menu page you are looking at, touch BACK or FWD to change pages. The function menu has more buttons than fit at once, which is the commonest reason people conclude a feature is missing.
• FTM-400XDR — Lock the keypad
  Briefly. Hold that same button for two seconds and you switch the radio off instead, which is a memorable way to learn the difference. Press it briefly again to unlock.
• FTM-400XDR — Factory reset
  Read them properly. FACTORY RESET puts everything back as shipped, memory channels included. MEM CH RESET erases only the memory channels and leaves your set-up menu settings exactly as they are. APRS RESET touches only the APRS block. Factory is not the thorough version of the other two, it is the destructive one.
• FTM-400XDR — Turn on the built-in GPS
  If that icon is absent, positioning is not happening and nothing that depends on it will work — no position in a beacon, no distance to another station. It can take several minutes from cold, and much longer the first time after purchase or after the radio has been unused for a long period.
• FTM-400XDR — Set up APRS with your callsign
  Two callsign fields on this radio and they do different jobs. APRS 23 takes an SSID; the CALLSIGN tile at the end of the set-up menu is the C4FM one and does not. Filling in one does not fill in the other.
• FTM-400XDR — Set up APRS with your callsign
  Emergency is on that same list, one turn of the knob past the ordinary choices. Selecting it flags your position as an emergency to everyone receiving you. Know it is there so you do not land on it by accident, and never pick it as a test.
• FTM-400XDR — Put APRS on the right band and speed
  MAIN BAND and SUB BAND follow whichever band you have selected, so APRS moves when you do — which is almost never what you want. B-BAND FIX pins it to band B and leaves band A free for talking. Then tune band B to your national APRS frequency, 144.390 MHz across most of North America, and turn its volume right down. The receiver keeps working with the audio at zero.
• FTM-400XDR — Put APRS on the right band and speed
  9600 exists for the few places that use it and will make you completely inaudible to a 1200 bps network. Your packets go out perfectly and mean nothing to anybody, which is a hard fault to spot from your end.
• FTM-400XDR — Send your position automatically
  Thirty seconds on a shared national channel is antisocial, and if a digipeater is repeating you as well you are using several times the air time you think. Five minutes in a car is fine; a station that does not move can sit at half an hour and nobody will miss it.
• FTM-400XDR — Send your position automatically
  This is the important one. More hops does not get you heard further — it gets your packet duplicated across a whole region by every digipeater that hears it. One or two hops is the normal, courteous setting almost everywhere, and the factory setting is already right for most people.
• FTM-400XDR — Send and receive APRS messages
  RX BEACON is on from the factory, and on a busy channel that is a bell every few seconds. Turning it off while leaving RX MESSAGE on is what most people actually want: quiet for the position reports, a noise for text addressed to you.
• FTM-400XDR — Send and receive APRS messages
  HOLD means it stays until you clear it, which is a poor idea while driving — the frequency display is the thing you need to be able to glance at. Ten seconds is the factory setting and about right.
• FTM-400XDR — Register your callsign for C4FM
  Ten characters, and letters, numbers and a hyphen only. Caps is a toggle rather than a shift — touch it once and everything after is capitals. If you need numbers, 123 switches the keyboard over.
• FTM-400XDR — Switch the radio into C4FM digital
  Digital works on band A only. If you are set up on band B and wondering why the digital modes seem to do nothing, that is why — and nothing on the screen says so.
• FTM-400XDR — Set the DG-ID so you only hear your group
  While you are on this screen, holding GM again sets both numbers back to 00. That is the escape hatch, and it is worth knowing before you need it rather than after.
• FTM-400XDR — Set the DG-ID so you only hear your group
  This is the half that catches people. Receive set to anything other than 00 means you hear only stations sending that same number — everybody else becomes silent, and the radio looks broken. Set it to 00 and you hear every C4FM station regardless.
• FTM-510DR — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  Note that the choices here are AUTO, minus and plus — there is no OFF. To work simplex you leave ARS on and sit on a simplex frequency, rather than switching the shift off. The offset amount is the next item along, 27 RPT SHIFT FREQ, anywhere from 0.00 to 99.95 MHz.
• FTM-510DR — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  T-ENC sends a CTCSS tone and leaves your receiver wide open, which is exactly what a repeater wants. The next one along, T-SQL, also silences your radio unless a matching tone comes back — and that is the single most common reason one of these sits quiet on a repeater that works for everybody else. The same setting is item 45 SQL TYPE if you would rather go the long way.
• FTM-510DR — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  If the channel already has something in it you get OVERWRITE? — turn FUNC to OK and press to go ahead. There are 999 channels, so there is rarely a reason to write over one. The microphone number keys jump straight to a channel: 1 then hold gives you channel 100.
• FTM-510DR — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  T-ENC is TONE ENC — it encodes a tone onto your transmission and leaves the receiver alone. Stop there. T-SQL, one further on, adds tone squelch to your receiver as well, and that is the one that makes the radio go quiet.
• FTM-510DR — Set the receive tone
  T-SQL is TONE SQL and it does both jobs at once — sends your tone AND mutes the receiver unless a matching one comes back. If all you wanted was into a repeater, stop at T-ENC instead.
• FTM-510DR — Set the receive tone
  D-ENC, T-DCS and D-TSQ do not appear in the squelch type list at all until this is on. That is why people conclude the radio cannot do it — the options are hidden rather than absent.
• FTM-510DR — Set the offset direction and amount
  There is no OFF here, only AUTO, minus and plus — which surprises people coming from an FTM-400, where the same setting does have an OFF. On this radio simplex is what you get by leaving it on AUTO on a simplex frequency.
• FTM-510DR — Set the squelch
  The knob you press and the knob you turn are different ones, which is the part that trips people up: press VOL/SQL, turn FUNC. Just past where the noise dies is the right place — further round costs you weak signals, which are the ones you most want.
• FTM-510DR — Change the transmit power
  The order is HIGH, then LOW, then MID — low before medium, which is not the order anyone expects and is easy to overshoot. HIGH is 55 watts on 144 MHz and 50 on 430, MID is 25 and LOW is 5. It leaves the factory on HIGH.
• FTM-510DR — Change the transmit power
  Worth doing, and worth checking rather than assuming. Yaesu's manuals disagree about this one: the Transmit Power section says P4 changes the power with the factory settings, while all three printings of item 29 — the microphone diagram, the Operating Manual table and the Advance Manual table — give P4 as WX, or T-CALL on a European set. Look at what item 29 says on your own radio.
• FTM-510DR — Listen on the repeater's input
  The blink is your only warning. Leave reverse on and you are transmitting on the repeater's output frequency, which is useless to you and unhelpful to everyone listening — so it is worth training your eye on that little sign.
• FTM-510DR — Name a memory channel
  Touching the screen is faster than turning the knob for this, and the keyboard has its own buttons for capitals, lower case, numbers and symbols. Up to 16 characters, upper and lower case, numbers and symbols.
• FTM-510DR — Name a memory channel
  Two confirmations, and the tag is not saved until the second one. The memory tag only shows on the operating band — the top half of the screen — so a channel on the sub band shows its frequency instead. That is not a failed save.
• FTM-510DR — Delete a memory channel
  No undo. And note that memory channel one and the home channel cannot be cleared at all — you can only write over them, which is a deliberate safeguard rather than a fault.
• FTM-510DR — Turn off the roger beep
  This one only sounds in C4FM, at the end of a received digital transmission. Digital audio stops dead rather than fading into noise, so the beep tells you the other station has finished — genuinely useful when you are new to digital, and irritating once you are not.
• FTM-510DR — Turn off the voice announcements
  This is not the running commentary some radios give. It reads out the frequency of the operating band when you ask it to — useful in a car, where taking your eyes off the road to read a small screen is the actual hazard, but it is not going to narrate the menus for you.
• FTM-510DR — Turn off dual watch
  The number matters here. Yaesu's own Operating Manual prints this procedure with item 52, and 52 is SCAN — a different thing entirely. Both of the setup-menu tables, in that same manual and in the Advance Manual, say 53. Go by what the screen says rather than by the number in the book.
• FTM-510DR — Turn off dual watch
  With this ON, pressing PTT during dual receive always transmits on the home channel — not on whatever you were listening to. That is either exactly what you want or exactly what you do not, so it is worth deciding deliberately rather than finding out on the air.
• FTM-510DR — Lock the keypad
  Briefly. Hold that same switch and you switch the radio off instead, which is a memorable way to learn the difference. Press it briefly again and UNLOCK appears as the padlock goes.
• FTM-510DR — Factory reset
  Everything means everything: all settings and all memory content. Item 122 MEMORY CH RESET erases only the memory channels and leaves your Setup Menu alone, and 123 APRS RESET touches only the APRS block. Factory reset is not the thorough version of those two, it is the destructive one.
• FTM-510DR — Turn on the built-in GPS
  It can take several minutes from cold, and considerably longer the first time after purchase or after the radio has sat unused. If the icon never settles, move somewhere with a clearer view of the sky before you start suspecting the radio.
• FTM-510DR — Set up APRS with your callsign
  Two callsign fields on this radio. Item 93 is APRS and takes an SSID; item 121 is the C4FM callsign and does not. Filling in one does nothing for the other, and that is the usual reason a new FTM-510 beacons happily while its digital transmissions go out wrong.
• FTM-510DR — Set up APRS with your callsign
  EMERGENCY! is on that same list, a turn of the knob past the ordinary choices. Selecting it flags your position as an emergency to everyone receiving you. Know it is there so you do not land on it by accident, and never choose it as a test.
• FTM-510DR — Put APRS on the right band and speed
  Note that APRS and DATA are two separate settings inside this one item — set the APRS line, not the DATA one. SUB BAND keeps packet on the lower half of the screen and leaves the main band free for talking. Then tune the sub band to your national APRS frequency, 144.390 MHz across most of North America, and turn its volume right down; the receiver keeps working with the audio at zero.
• FTM-510DR — Put APRS on the right band and speed
  9600 exists for the handful of places that use it and will make you completely inaudible to a 1200 bps network. Your packets go out perfectly and mean nothing to anybody, which is very hard to spot from your end.
• FTM-510DR — Send your position automatically
  Thirty seconds on a shared national channel is antisocial, and with a digipeater repeating you as well you are using several times the air time you think. Five minutes suits a car; a station that does not move can sit at half an hour and nobody will miss it.
• FTM-510DR — Send your position automatically
  This is the important one. More hops does not get you heard further — it gets your packet duplicated across a whole region by every digipeater that hears it. One or two hops is the courteous setting almost everywhere.
• FTM-510DR — Send and receive APRS messages
  RX BEACON is on from the factory, and on a busy channel that is a bell every few seconds. Turning it off while leaving RX MESSAGE on is what most people actually want: quiet for the position reports, a noise for text addressed to you.
• FTM-510DR — Send and receive APRS messages
  HOLD means it stays until you clear it, which is a poor idea while driving — the frequency display is the thing you need to be able to glance at. MYPACKET on the same item decides whether your own beacons pop up as well, which is useful for a day and irritating after that.
• FTM-510DR — Register your callsign for C4FM
  Touching the screen is much faster than turning the knob. The keyboard has its own arrows for moving the cursor, a 123 button for numbers and symbols, and a backspace that deletes the character to the left.
• FTM-510DR — Register your callsign for C4FM
  Worth doing the moment a used radio arrives. A second-hand FTM-510 that has never been reset is still sending the previous owner's callsign on every digital over, and nothing on the display makes that obvious.
• FTM-510DR — Switch the radio into C4FM digital
  The bar above the icon is the thing to look at. Bar showing means AMS is running and the radio will match whatever arrives; bar gone means you have fixed the mode and it will not adapt.
• FTM-510DR — Switch the radio into C4FM digital
  This is why people conclude their radio does not have Voice FR mode. It is not missing, it is hidden — one menu item away, and off from the factory.
• FTM-510DR — Set the DG-ID so you only hear your group
  While you are on this screen, holding the FUNC knob sets both numbers straight back to 00. That is the escape hatch, and it is worth knowing before you need it rather than after.
• FTM-510DR — Set the DG-ID so you only hear your group
  This is the half that catches people. Receive set to anything other than 00 means you hear only stations sending that same number, and everybody else goes silent — the radio looks broken and nothing on the main screen explains it. Set it to 00 and you hear every C4FM station regardless.
• FTM-6000R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  This one is on the Function list from the factory, so tap the key rather than holding it. If you hold it and go looking in the Menu list, item 20 will be showing a row of dashes — that is not a fault, it just means the item lives on the other list.
• FTM-6000R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  21 is a container, so there is an extra turn and press of DIAL on the way in to get from RPT.OTR to RPT.FRQ. The press of DIAL at the end saves and drops you straight back to normal operation, the same as any other item.
• FTM-6000R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  TON.ENC sends the tone and leaves your receiver normal, which is what a repeater wants. TON.SQL sends it and also refuses to open your speaker unless the tone comes back — pick that one by accident and the repeater will hear you fine while you hear nothing.
• FTM-6000R — Save a repeater to a memory channel
  If the channel is already in use the screen shows OVWRT?. Press V/M mw again to overwrite it, or walk away if that was not what you meant.
• FTM-6000R — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  Stop at the value — do not press DIAL here. On this radio a press of DIAL at a value screen saves the setting AND drops you straight back to normal operation, and the next step needs you still inside the menu. SQL back is what moves you along.
• FTM-6000R — Set the transmit tone (CTCSS / PL)
  SQL back is how you move from one menu item to the next without leaving the menu. Pressing DIAL at a value screen saves and drops you all the way back to normal operation, so use SQL back here or you will be opening the menu again.
• FTM-6000R — Set the receive tone
  Do not press DIAL at this screen. It would save the setting and return you to normal operation, and the next step needs you still in the menu — SQL back is the key that moves you on.
• FTM-6000R — Set the receive tone
  TSQ where you expected TN means you are on tone squelch, not transmit tone. If the repeater does not send a tone back to you, TSQ will make it sound dead.
• FTM-6000R — Set the offset direction and amount
  Tap, do not hold — this item lives on the Function list from the factory, so the Menu list shows dashes where item 20 should be. And if you left ARS on in the step above, expect it to recompute the direction the next time you tune; the two settings fight, and ARS wins.
• FTM-6000R — Set the offset direction and amount
  The factory amount depends on which version of the radio you have, and Yaesu says so. Check what yours actually shows before you change it — the standard shift for your country is almost certainly already there.
• FTM-6000R — Set the squelch
  The higher you take it, the more weak signals it will also silence. Set it just past where the noise stops rather than as high as it will go.
• FTM-6000R — Change the transmit power
  Tap rather than hold — this is another of the four factory Function list items, so the Menu list will show dashes at 30.
• FTM-6000R — Listen on the repeater's input
  Left on by accident, reverse puts your transmitter on the repeater's output and your receiver on its input. Everything looks normal and nothing works.
• FTM-6000R — Listen on the repeater's input
  14 is a container and needs the extra level — choose the key first, then the function. All four P keys arrive with something else on them, so whichever you take, you are giving something up.
• FTM-6000R — Name a memory channel
  Check you are in memory mode before the next step, not the VFO — holding V/M mw in the VFO opens the write screen instead of the naming list. The home channel can be named too, but it is not in the DIAL sequence here; you reach it from F-12 HOME on the Function list first.
• FTM-6000R — Name a memory channel
  A press of DIAL here moves right rather than finishing. If you need to go back, BAND grp moves the cursor left and PMG pw moves it right.
• FTM-6000R — Delete a memory channel
  OK? is the confirmation. Nothing has been deleted yet.
• FTM-6000R — Delete a memory channel
  Channel 001 and the home channel cannot be cleared, and Yaesu says so in as many words. If nothing happens on one of those, that is the reason. Store something else over the top instead.
• FTM-6000R — Turn off the roger beep
  This one only fires on an incoming call, never at the end of your own transmission. If it is going off unexpectedly, the tone squelch settings are what to look at.
• FTM-6000R — Turn off the voice announcements
  Worth a word of warning on this item. The Advance Manual describes OFF as bright and MAX as dark, which is the opposite of what both words normally mean, and the factory setting is OFF. We cannot tell from the books which way round it actually is. Try all three and pick the one that looks right.
• FTM-6000R — Turn off dual watch
  Two things to get right. You must be in VFO mode first: holding V/M mw on a memory channel opens the copy, name and delete list instead, and the second hold would fire whichever of those you had landed on. And HM sits BEFORE channel 001, while the write screen opens on the lowest free channel number — so turn left. Turn right and you write your frequency into a numbered channel instead.
• FTM-6000R — Turn off dual watch
  All four arrive with something else on them — squelch off, home, scan, and either weather alert or the 1750 hertz tone depending on where the radio was sold. Whichever you pick, you are giving something up.
• FTM-6000R — Turn off dual watch
  Press the key you actually chose two steps up. P1 arrives set to SQL OFF from the factory, so if you left the defaults alone, P1 is the wrong one.
• FTM-6000R — Lock the keypad
  Briefly. Hold it and you will turn the radio off instead, which is a memorable way to learn the difference.
• FTM-6000R — Factory reset
  Here is a trap in the manual rather than the radio. Yaesu's printed text says ALL.RST appears again at this step, which is just step two's words repeated. The illustration next to it, and the radio, show RST.OK? — the confirmation prompt. If you follow the text you will think nothing happened and press again, which carries out the reset.
• FTM-6000R — Factory reset
  Pressing PTT at any point during this cancels it, right up to the last press. That is the escape hatch if you got here by mistake.
• FTX-1 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  MIC is the factory setting, and it means the radio listens to the front microphone jack. Leave it there and the computer's audio never reaches the transmitter, however correct everything else looks. USB is what tells the radio to take audio and data from the USB jack.
• FTX-1 — Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
  This one leaves the factory switched OFF, and OFF means the serial lines cannot key the transmitter at all. If the software says it is transmitting and the radio sits there receiving, this is almost always why.
• FTX-1 — Connect the radio to a computer
  Note 115200 is available here, which the FT-891 and FT-991A do not offer. Faster is not automatically better — set whatever the software is set to, and nothing else.
• FTX-1 — Set the drive level for digital modes
  Turn this and the computer's output slider in the same direction, not against each other. Cranking one to compensate for the other is exactly how a signal ends up wide.
• FTX-1 — Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
  Defaults differ by mode: about 3000 Hz on SSB, 500 Hz on CW and RTTY. If a CW signal sounds oddly wide, check what mode the radio thinks it is in before you blame the filter.
• FTX-1 — Turn on the noise blanker
  Note these are words rather than the numbers the FT-891 and FT-991A use for the same two settings. Same idea, different scale — do not go looking for a dB figure.
• FTX-1 — Notch out a whistle or a carrier
  WIDE is easier to aim and takes more of the voice with it. If the notch is killing the whistle and muffling the station at the same time, this is the setting.
• FTX-1 — Save a frequency to a memory channel
  Held, not tapped. A quick press of V/M just switches between VFO and memory — it does not open the list.
• FTX-1 — Run the antenna tuner
  The manual asks you to listen before tuning, because tuning keys the transmitter onto whatever frequency you are sitting on.
• FTX-1 — Run the antenna tuner
  The built-in tuner cannot be used with an external tuner connected to the antenna jack. It is one or the other, not both.

None of these are exotic. Every one of them produces a radio that looks like it is working, which is exactly what makes them expensive — you find out when nobody answers, and by then you have no idea which setting to suspect.

What “checked” means here

A wrong keystroke is far worse than a missing model. Somebody who follows bad instructions and puts their radio on the wrong transmit frequency has no way of knowing it went wrong — the radio looks fine and nobody answers. So nothing appears on these pages until somebody has walked it on the physical radio with the manual shut, or two independent sources agree on it, or it comes straight out of the manufacturer’s own manual for that exact model.

Of the 487 procedures here, 27 were walked on the radio itself, 3 were confirmed by two independent sources and 457 came from the manufacturer's own operating manual. Where something has not been checked, the page says so and leaves it out rather than guessing. That is why the coverage is 86 radios across 40 families rather than a longer list that would be partly invented.

If your radio is not here

There are far more radios than any one site can cover by hand. CHIRP is free software that programs 739 models from a computer, and for anything more than a handful of channels it is faster than the keypad anyway. The app has a link to its supported-radio list, and a one-tap way to ask for yours — what gets added next is decided by what people ask for.