How to Program an FT-710 — Step by Step

Yaesu's direct-sampling HF and 6 meter radio with a 4.3-inch color touchscreen and the 3D spectrum display. There are no roofing filters to choose because there are no roofing filters — everything you used to do with a crystal filter you now do with a knob and a screen.

This page covers: Yaesu FT-710 AESS, Yaesu FT-710 Field. They share the same firmware, so the steps below are identical on all of them whatever name is printed on the front.

Coming from an older Yaesu, three habits will not transfer

If your last radio was an FT-857, an FT-897 or an FT-991A, three things you know are no longer true. First, there are no menu numbers at all — the whole menu is named and hierarchical, five categories wide and three levels deep, category to group to item — so there is nothing to memorize or mistype. Second, there are no roofing filters to select, because this receiver is direct sampling with an intermediate frequency at 18 kHz on SSB and CW. There is no crystal filter slot, no 300 Hz option to buy, nothing to install. Everything you would have done with a filter you now do with WIDTH, with the NAR key, and with the shift control. Third, smaller, but it catches people: there is no power-on key combination to reset this radio. The reset lives in the menu under EXTENSION SETTING.

Two knobs, two different save rituals, and one of them is a key marked RESET

This radio splits its controls across two knobs and the split is not intuitive. The FUNC knob opens the menu and carries the row of shortcut tiles — scope level, microphone gain, transmit power, monitor level, keyer, CW speed and pitch and the rest. What it does not carry is the noise reduction or the noise blanker level: neither appears among those tiles, and the only route Yaesu documents to either is a press and hold of the DNR key or the NB key itself. The STEP, MCH and DSP knob does something else entirely: press it and you are in the DSP filter ring, where shift, width, notch, contour and the audio peak filter live. Those two halves save differently. A menu item under FUNC saves when you press FUNC or after about three seconds. A DSP filter parameter saves when you press the STEP knob and then press the key marked DSP RESET — or after about five seconds. Pressing a key called RESET in order to save something is exactly as alarming as it sounds, and it is worse than that: hold the same key a moment longer and you have wiped the shift, width, notch, contour and peak filter settings for the band you are on.

AESS and Field are the same radio in different boxes

Yaesu prints one manual for both and calls the radio simply the FT-710 throughout. The only differences the manual documents anywhere are what comes in the carton: the AESS is supplied with the SP-40 external speaker, which the Field lists as an option, and the Field is supplied with a carrying belt, which the AESS is not. The specifications are printed once, undifferentiated — 100 watts, the same case, the same weight. The AESS audio feature itself is presented as belonging to the radio generally, with one caution attached: it is designed to work with the SP-40 and Yaesu says it will not perform properly with other speakers. Anything you may have heard about the Field being a mechanically different radio is not in this book, which means we are not going to repeat it.

What you can do on this radio

Rather do this on your phone, standing at the radio?

The app walks you through the same steps one at a time, on a screen sized for a phone.

Open Radio Rosetta

Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes on an FT-710

This radio has a button labeled FT8. Not literally — it is called PRESET and it sits in the bottom right corner of the mode grid — but that is what it does, and it is the single nicest thing about setting this radio up for digital work.

  1. Press MODE, or just touch the mode name on the screen.MODEThe screen should show: Sixteen tiles — fifteen modes and PRESET. LSB, USB, CW-L, CW-U across the top; AM, AM-N, FM, FM-N; DATA-L, DATA-U, DATA-FM, D-FM-N; RTTY-L, RTTY-U, PSK, and PRESET in the last corner.
  2. Touch PRESET. The settings are applied and the screen goes back to normal on its own.touch PRESETThe screen should show: PRESET turns blue. Blue means the preset settings are live; gray means they are not.PRESET is a bundle of seventeen settings applied in one touch — the CAT rate, the AGC delays, the audio cut frequencies, the transmit passband, the modulation source and the drive levels. The one it changes from the radio's ordinary data defaults is the PTT method, which it sets to RTS. That is the piece that lets your software key the radio over the USB cable.
  3. Touching PRESET again cancels it and puts your previous settings back.touch PRESETThe screen should show: PRESET goes gray.That is genuinely reversible, which is unusual and worth knowing. You are not committing to anything by trying it.
  4. To see or change what PRESET actually does, touch and hold it. There are five preset channels, and the first one arrives named FT-8.touch PRESET›hold itThe screen should show: PRESET1 through PRESET5 down the left, the seventeen settings on the right.Watch out. 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.

One honest gap, and it matters: Yaesu's FT8 procedure never names an operating mode. It tells you to touch PRESET and stops there, and the illustrations happen to show the radio on USB. The manual never says PRESET selects a mode, never says which mode it leaves you in, and never says whether FT8 wants DATA-U or USB. The only place it ties a mode name to a digital application at all is the PSK page, where it tells you to set your PC software to DATA-U — and that is an instruction about the software, for PSK. So: use PRESET, then look at what the mode field says on your own radio, and set your software to match that. We are not going to print a guess. Two other things about the data setup that are in the book: the modulation source item ships on AUTO, which routes USB audio automatically when the computer asserts RTS, so you do not have to force it to USB — and if you do force it to USB or REAR, Yaesu says plainly that it disables the microphone circuit on the front panel, with nothing on the display to tell you.

Taken from the manufacturer's own manual for this model.

Connect the radio to a computer on an FT-710

Three CAT ports, two of them on one USB cable. That sounds worse than it is, but it does mean the first question is not what speed but which port.

Have these to hand before you start

  • The Yaesu virtual COM port driver, from yaesu.com. One USB cable carries control, audio and keying.
  • Which of the two COM ports Windows has given you — this radio presents two.
  1. Install Yaesu's virtual COM port driver before you plug the cable in.install the virtual COM port driverWithout it the computer will not see the radio at all. The download and its installation manual are on the Yaesu website.
  2. Press the FUNC knob, then walk down to the CAT-1 rate. Touch each step, or rotate FUNC to it and press.FUNC›touch OPERATION SETTING›touch GENERAL›touch CAT-1 RATEThe screen should show: CAT-1 RATE and its value.CAT-1 is the enhanced COM port on the USB socket and it ships at 38400 bps, which is fast enough for most software out of the box. CAT-2 is the standard COM port on the same cable and ships at 4800. CAT-3 is the separate TUNER/LINEAR jack and ships at 38400.
  3. Rotate FUNC or touch the arrows to change it. Press FUNC, or just wait about three seconds, and it is saved.dial → 38400›wait three secondsWatch out. 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.
  4. Touch BACK a few times to get out.touch BACKWatch out. BACK does not discard. Whatever you left the value on is what the radio now has.

The stop bit is one by default and there is no parity or data-bit setting anywhere in the menu. The timeout item is called CAT-1 TIME OUT TIMER and ships at 10 milliseconds; do not confuse it with TX TIME OUT TIMER, which is how long the radio will let you transmit. If you would rather use the round TUNER/LINEAR jack for CAT than for a tuner, that is TUN/LIN PORT SELECT set to CAT-3 — it ships on EXT-TUNER. Two things that are not in this book and we will not invent: which of the two virtual COM ports a logging program should prefer, and the CAT command set itself. The manual names exactly one command in its entire 116 pages. If your software has an FT-710 profile, trust it over anything we could guess.

Taken from the manufacturer's own manual for this model.

Set the drive level for digital modes on an FT-710

Two separate things: how loud the computer's audio arrives, and how much power the radio makes with it. The second one has a live control on the FUNC knob and a per-band ceiling in the menu.

  1. Press FUNC and walk down to the modulation source for the data modes. Check what it says before you change anything.FUNC›touch RADIO SETTING›touch MODE PSK/DATA›touch MOD SOURCEThe screen should show: MOD SOURCE, then MIC, USB, REAR or AUTO.AUTO is the default and usually the right answer — it picks the socket from how the transmitter was keyed, so a computer asserting RTS gets the USB socket automatically. Forcing it to USB works too, but Yaesu warns that USB and REAR both switch off the front panel microphone entirely, and nothing on the display says so.
  2. USB MOD GAIN is the drive level from the USB socket. It runs 0 to 100 and ships at 50.touch USB MOD GAIN›dial → 50The screen should show: USB MOD GAIN and a number.Watch out. 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.
  3. For power, touch BACK out of the menu, press FUNC and touch the RF POWER tile, then rotate FUNC. It is live.touch BACK›FUNC›touch RF POWER›dial → your powerThe screen should show: The wattage on the tile.Watch out. In AM, Yaesu caps you at 25 watts of carrier and says so in a warning box.
  4. If you want a ceiling rather than a setting, that is HF MAX POWER under TX GENERAL.FUNC›touch OPERATION SETTING›touch TX GENERAL›touch HF MAX POWERThe screen should show: HF MAX POWER, 5 to 100 watts.One ceiling for the whole of HF rather than a figure per band — set it to 50 and every HF band is capped at 50. Three more items sit beside it for what HF does not cover: 50M MAX POWER at 5 to 100, 70M MAX POWER at 5 to 50, and AM MAX POWER at 5 to 25. Useful when you never want to key a hundred watts into a particular antenna by accident.

Two honest gaps here. Yaesu gives no ALC target for setting data drive — the only place the manual describes the usual watch-the-ALC ritual is for microphone gain, and it explicitly restricts the automatic modulation control to the voice and data sideband modes. So how to judge the right USB MOD GAIN is not in this book. And the item's own wording says it applies when the modulation source is set to USB, which leaves open what it does when the source is on AUTO and AUTO has chosen the USB socket. The manual does not resolve that and neither will we. Start at the default of 50, watch your ALC, and move a few at a time. There is also no duty-cycle advice for digital modes anywhere in the manual beyond a general caution about transmitting continuously for long periods — which for FT8 on a hundred watts is worth taking seriously.

Taken from the manufacturer's own manual for this model.

Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door on an FT-710

Everything about filtering on this radio happens on one knob, and it is not the one you have been using for the menu. Press the STEP, MCH and DSP knob and you are in the filter ring.

  1. Press the STEP, MCH and DSP knob — or just touch the spectrum area of the screen.STEP MCH DSPThe screen should show: The knob's LED lights orange and a tab bar appears over the filter display: SHIFT, WIDTH, NOTCH, CONTOUR. The audio peak filter shares CONTOUR’s slot — only one of the two shows at a time, and you swap between them by pressing the knob on that tab.This is a separate control system from the menu, with its own knob and its own way of saving. Press it briefly — a press and hold of this same knob resets whichever function is showing, and you will be pressing it several times before you are done.
  2. Rotate to WIDTH and press to go in. You can also just touch the word WIDTH.dial → to WIDTH›STEP MCH DSPThe screen should show: The bandwidth figure starts blinking.Blinking means it is live and waiting for you.
  3. Rotate counter-clockwise to narrow, clockwise to widen.dial → counter-clockwise to narrowThe screen should show: The filter shape on the display changes as you turn.SSB runs 300 to 4000 Hz and ships at 3000. CW and RTTY share a row — 50 to 4000 Hz, shipping at 500. DATA and PSK share the next one — also 50 to 4000, but shipping at 600. In AM and FM the width is a fixed figure rather than a range: 9000 Hz for AM, narrow FM and narrow digital FM, 6000 for narrow AM, and 16000 for FM and data FM.
  4. Press the knob, then press the DSP RESET key to confirm. Waiting about five seconds does the same thing.STEP MCH DSP›DSP RESETWatch out. 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.
  5. The NAR key jumps straight to a narrow bandwidth you have pre-set. Press it again to hand control back to WIDTH.NARThe screen should show: The passband narrows to your NAR figure.What NAR gives you is a menu item, set per mode — under MODE SSB, MODE CW, MODE PSK/DATA or MODE RTTY, each with its own NAR WIDTH. SSB ships at 1500 Hz, CW at 250, data and RTTY at 300.
  6. SHIFT is on the same ring: press in, rotate to SHIFT, press again to go in, then turn. Press the knob and then DSP RESET, or wait about five seconds, to save it. It moves the whole passband without changing the pitch of what you are listening to. The range is plus or minus 1.2 kHz.STEP MCH DSP›dial → to SHIFT›STEP MCH DSP›dial → left or right›DSP RESETUse width when the interference is outside your signal and shift when it is on one edge of it.

There is nothing else to buy and nothing to install. This receiver is direct sampling, with the intermediate frequency down at 18 kHz on SSB and CW, and it has no roofing filters at all — no crystal filter slots, no 300 Hz option, nothing. That surprises people coming from an FT-991A or an FT-857. All the selectivity is in the DSP and all of it is on this one knob. Everything you set here is remembered separately for each VFO and each band, which is convenient and also means that finding your CW filter wide open on 40 meters does not mean anything is broken. One inconsistency in the book, quoted rather than reconciled: the filter display page says the setting may be changed by turning the FUNC knob, while all six of the filter procedures use the STEP, MCH and DSP knob. The procedures are the ones to follow.

Taken from the manufacturer's own manual for this model.

Turn on noise reduction on an FT-710

A dedicated key, and a level control that is fifteen different algorithms rather than fifteen degrees of the same one.

  1. Press DNR. Press it again to switch it off.DNRThe screen should show: The DNR indicator lights.
  2. Hold DNR to bring up the level, then turn the FUNC knob.hold DNR›dial → FUNCThe screen should show: A DNR LEVEL box with a number in it.Watch out. 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.
  3. The box disappears after about three seconds and that is that. There is no save step.stop turningThe FUNC knob then quietly goes back to whatever it was assigned to before.

The fifteen settings are not a volume control. Yaesu's own description is that each of the fifteen is a different noise reduction algorithm, written for a different noise profile, and their advice is to experiment rather than to find a number and leave it. That is a meaningfully different instruction from the level control on most radios, and it is worth taking literally — the setting that fixes power line buzz is not the setting that fixes band noise. Two things that follow from the level having no menu item: there is no printed default for it anywhere in the manual, and a menu reset will not restore it. If you want this on the microphone instead, DNR is one of the functions you can assign to a P key.

Taken from the manufacturer's own manual for this model.

Turn on the noise blanker on an FT-710

An IF noise blanker on its own key, with a level on the key and two more useful settings hidden in the menu that most people never find.

  1. Press NB. Press it again to switch it off.NBThe screen should show: The NB indicator lights.Like the noise reduction, it is remembered separately for each VFO and each band.
  2. Hold NB for the level, then turn the FUNC knob. The box clears itself after about three seconds.hold NB›dial → FUNCThe screen should show: An NB LEVEL box with a number.Watch out. 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.
  3. In the menu, NB REJECTION sets how hard it cuts — low, medium or high. It ships on medium.FUNC›touch OPERATION SETTING›touch RX DSP›touch NB REJECTIONThe screen should show: NB REJECTION and its value.
  4. NB WIDTH sets how long a pulse it will blank. It ships on medium. Touch BACK a few times to get back to the operating screen.touch NB WIDTH›dial → NARROW, MEDIUM or WIDE›touch BACKThe screen should show: NB WIDTH and its value.This is the one worth knowing about. A blanker tuned for short sharp ignition pulses does nothing against the long ragged pulses from some switching supplies and electric fences. Widening this is what makes those go away, and it is buried two levels down in a menu nobody opens.

Yaesu's only caution here is a mild one — the blanker may be less effective on some other types of interference. Worth adding the thing every blanker shares: on a crowded band, a blanker turned up hard will cost you some ability to hear a weak signal next to a strong one. If something sounds wrong on a busy evening that did not sound wrong an hour ago, switching it off is a five-second test. NB can also be put on a microphone P key.

Taken from the manufacturer's own manual for this model.

Notch out a whistle or a carrier on an FT-710

Two notches, in two completely different places on this radio. The manual one is on the DSP knob with the rest of the filters. The automatic one is a touch tile at the bottom of the screen.

  1. Press the STEP, MCH and DSP knob briefly, rotate to NOTCH and press again — briefly both times. Touching the word NOTCH does the same.STEP MCH DSP›dial → to NOTCH›STEP MCH DSPThe screen should show: The notch center frequency starts blinking, and a notch appears as a downward spike in the filter display.
  2. Rotate the knob until the interfering tone drops into the null.dial → to the nullThe screen should show: The notch moves across the filter display as you turn.You can watch the notch and the interference at the same time on the filter strip, which makes this easier than doing it by ear.
  3. Press the knob, then the DSP RESET key to confirm. Or wait about five seconds.STEP MCH DSP›DSP RESETWatch out. 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.
  4. How wide the notch cuts is a menu item — narrow or wide. It ships on wide. Touch BACK a few times to get back to the operating screen.FUNC›touch OPERATION SETTING›touch RX DSP›touch IF NOTCH WIDTH›touch BACKThe screen should show: IF NOTCH WIDTH.Narrow takes out a single clean carrier with less damage to the signal around it. Wide is what you want against something less tidy.
  5. For the automatic notch, touch the DNF tile along the bottom of the meter area.touch DNFThe screen should show: The DNF tile changes from OFF to on, and DNF appears among the scope status icons.DNF is an auto notch and has no adjustment at all — Yaesu says so in as many words: because this is an auto-notch feature there is no adjustment knob associated with it. It can null more than one beat note at a time, which the manual notch cannot.

Worth being honest about one thing: Yaesu never prints a numbered procedure for turning DNF on or off. What the manual gives you is a blanket instruction for that row of status tiles — to change a setting, touch the appropriate location on the display — plus an entry in the microphone key assignment list confirming that DNF turns the digital notch filter on and off. So the touch is right, and it is the only documented way in. The manual also gives no numeric range for the manual notch's center frequency, and describes no on-or-off action for it at all, only adjusting the null and returning it to its initial value. If you need those numbers, they are not in this book.

Taken from the manufacturer's own manual for this model.

Work a DX station that is running split on an FT-710

Two keys and two frequencies, and on this radio the two VFOs are stacked one above the other on the screen, which makes it much harder to get backwards than on a radio with one frequency display.

Have these to hand before you start

  • The frequency the DX station is transmitting on.
  • Where he is listening.
  1. Press A/B and set the upper VFO to the frequency you want to receive on — the one the DX station is transmitting on.A/B›dial → where you will listenThe screen should show: The upper row in white is the one you are setting.Upper is receive. That is the rule on this radio and it holds throughout.
  2. Press SPLIT, then set the lower VFO to where you will transmit.SPLIT›dial → where you will transmitThe screen should show: The lower row, in gray, is now the transmit frequency. The lamps beside the main dial go red.Upper receives, lower transmits. Both can be on different bands and in different modes if you want.
  3. To hear your own transmit frequency, press FUNC and touch TXW — you hear it while you keep the FUNC knob pressed.FUNC›touch TXWThe screen should show: The transmit frequency, for as long as you hold.Watch out. 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.
  4. Holding the STEP, MCH and DSP knob down while you turn the main dial moves both frequencies together, keeping the gap.hold STEP MCH DSP›dial → both togetherThis is the most useful split trick on the radio and it is printed as a bullet rather than a step, so almost nobody finds it. It is how you follow a DX station who is drifting up the band without losing your offset.
  5. Press SPLIT again to cancel.SPLITThe screen should show: The lamps go back to their normal color.

There is no quick-split gesture on this radio — no key that puts you five up and switches split on in one press, the way the older Yaesus do. The four bullets in the manual are the complete set of split shortcuts. One of those bullets says, in full, that pressing and holding the SPLIT key changes the receive frequency, and the manual never explains what that actually means or which VFO the dial then controls. We are not going to guess at it. Try it on a dead band before you try it in a pileup.

Taken from the manufacturer's own manual for this model.

Save a frequency to a memory channel on an FT-710

One gesture does two jobs here: the same press and hold of V/M opens the channel list and writes to the channel you picked. Which is tidy once you know it and confusing the first time.

  1. Set the frequency, the mode and anything else you want kept. Pressing MODE opens the mode grid; touching the mode you want is what selects it and closes the grid again.dial → the frequency›MODE›touch the modeWatch out. Do not leave the mode grid open — close it with a touch on a mode before you reach for V/M.
  2. Hold V/M. The memory channel list opens.hold V/MThe screen should show: A list of channels — M-01, M-02 and so on, with their frequencies and modes. Empty channels show dashes.Nothing has been written yet. The key legend has a small W badge on it, which is the cue that this key writes.
  3. Touch the channel you want, or rotate the STEP, MCH and DSP knob to it.touch the channel›dial → STEP MCH DSPThe screen should show: The selected row is outlined.Watch out. The STEP, MCH and DSP knob, not FUNC. Nearly everything on the screen is FUNC and this one is not.
  4. Hold V/M again to write it, then touch BACK to store it and return to the normal screen.hold V/M›touch BACKThe screen should show: The channel fills in.Watch out. 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.
  5. To name it, touch NAME on the right of the list, type up to twelve characters, and touch ENT. Then BACK to finish.touch NAME›touch ENT›touch BACKThe screen should show: The name appears alongside the frequency.

Ninety-nine channels, plus the programmed scan pairs. There is an undo, which is unusual and worth knowing about: if you erase a channel by mistake, touching RESTORE on the memory list brings it back. Some channels cannot be erased at all — M-01, and the 60 meter channels, which the erase note gives as 5-01 through 5-10 on a US radio and 5-01 through 5-07 on a UK one. The 60 meter channel table itself runs to 5-15 on the US version, so if you are counting them, count from the table. The quick memory bank is separate: holding QMB writes the current frequency into the next of five — ten if you raise it in the menu — and once all five are full the oldest one falls off the end. And Yaesu attaches an unusually direct warning to this whole section: memory contents can be lost to static, to electrical noise, to a repair or to a mistake, and you should keep a copy. On this radio that is easy — EXTENSION SETTING, SD CARD, MEM LIST SAVE writes the lot to a card, and there is a matching one for your entire menu.

Taken from the manufacturer's own manual for this model.

Run the antenna tuner on an FT-710

Built into every FT-710, and it works on one key. A short press and a long press do very different things, and the long one puts you on the air.

  1. A short press puts the tuner in the transmit path. Nothing is tuned yet.TUNEThe screen should show: TUNE appears.It also picks the stored tuning point closest to where you are, which is why a band you have used before often needs nothing further.
  2. Listen before you do the next step, and make sure an antenna or a dummy load is actually connected.listen on the frequency firstWatch out. Both of those are Yaesu's own instructions, not ours. The next step transmits.
  3. Hold TUNE for about a second to tune.hold TUNEThe screen should show: TUNE blinks while it works and goes steady again when the radio returns to receive. Yaesu words it two ways: the tuner section says only that TUNE is displayed while tuning is in progress, and the display reference on page 22 is the one that says it blinks. The external FC-40 has its own separate TUNER icon that blinks the same way.Watch out. The transmitter is engaged for this, immediately, with no prompt. If the antenna will not match, HI-SWR appears on the screen.
  4. A short press again takes the tuner back out of the path.TUNEThe screen should show: TUNE goes out.

What it will match is 16.5 to 150 ohms on HF, which is an SWR of 3 to 1 or better, and a narrower 25 to 100 ohms on 6 meters, which is 2 to 1. Yaesu is unusually frank about what that excludes — simple non-resonant whips, random wires and a G5RV on most bands may well be outside it. And it tunes what the radio sees at its own end of the coax, not what is happening at the antenna. The tuner remembers a solution for every 10 kHz window you have tuned in, but only if the result was better than 2 to 1; between 2 and 3 it works but does not store, and above 3 you get HI-SWR and nothing is kept. One number to flag rather than fix: the tuner section says the matching range starts at 16.5 ohms and the specifications page says 16.7. Both are printed in the same book. If you are using an external tuner or an ATAS antenna instead, that is TUNER TYPE SELECT in the general menu — and note that with the internal tuner selected, Yaesu says an external one cannot be used at all.

Taken from the manufacturer's own manual for this model.

Set the CW keyer speed and weight on an FT-710

One of the shortcut tiles on the function screen. Two presses and a turn.

  1. Press the FUNC knob and touch KEYER to switch the electronic keyer on.FUNC›touch KEYERThe screen should show: The KEYER tile shows it is on.Without this the paddle does nothing.
  2. Press FUNC again, touch CW SPEED, and rotate FUNC. The range is 4 to 60 words a minute and the change is live.FUNC›touch CW SPEED›dial → the speedThe screen should show: The speed on the tile, and CW SPEED in the assignment box at the right of the lower VFO line.No commit step is printed for this one — it takes effect as you turn.

Because it is a tile rather than a menu item, there is no printed default speed anywhere in the manual. The illustration shows 20 words a minute and that is an illustration, not a specification — we are not going to publish it as the default. The rest of the keyer is in the menu under CW SETTING and KEYER: the keyer type ships on iambic B with bug, iambic A, an iambic Y mode and an automatic character spacing mode as the alternatives; the paddle wiring is normal, tip dot and ring dash, with a reverse option; the weight ships at 3.0. One thing to read carefully rather than trust: the manual describes iambic A and B two different ways in two places — the operating section says a code element is sent on releasing both paddles and the menu page says on pressing them. Press versus release is the whole difference between the two modes, and Yaesu prints both. Try it and believe your paddle. And the key jack is on the back of the radio, whatever two stray sentences elsewhere in the book say about a front one; there is no key jack on the front panel.

Taken from the manufacturer's own manual for this model.

Reset the menu to factory settings on an FT-710

Three resets, all in one place, all with a confirmation you can back out of. There is no power-on key combination on this radio — if you came from an FT-857 and have been holding keys while switching on, that is not how this one works.

  1. Before anything else, put a card in and save what you have. MEM LIST SAVE writes your memories; MENU SAVE writes your whole menu.FUNC›touch EXTENSION SETTING›touch SD CARDBoth of these have matching load functions, so a reset stops being frightening. It takes a minute and it is the difference between an experiment and a loss.
  2. Touch BACK out of the SD CARD menu, then go to EXTENSION SETTING and RESET.touch BACK›FUNC›touch EXTENSION SETTING›touch RESETThe screen should show: Three rows, each with its own DONE button: MEMORY CLEAR, MENU CLEAR, ALL RESET.
  3. Touch DONE against the one you want.touch DONEThe screen should show: A confirmation screen.Watch out. 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.
  4. Touch OK to go ahead, or CANCEL to back out. The radio switches itself off and on again, and that is it.touch OKThe screen should show: The power goes off and comes back by itself.The cancel is real, which makes this one of the few genuinely safe destructive operations on the radio.

One thing worth knowing about what a reset does not reach. The settings that live on the function screen tiles rather than in the menu — listed in the menu map above — have no menu entry for MENU CLEAR to restore, and neither do the noise reduction and noise blanker levels, which are reached only from their own front panel keys. The manual never says what ALL RESET does to any of them. The DSP filter values are the same story and have their own reset: press and hold the DSP RESET key to put the shift, width, notch, contour and audio peak filter back to default for the band you are on. And the tuner's memories have no documented way to clear them at all.

Taken from the manufacturer's own manual for this model.

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