How to Program an FT-900 — Step by Step

A hundred watts of HF from the mid nineties, with a front panel that comes off for mobile work. There is no menu on this radio at all — the settings that would be a menu anywhere else are hidden in button combinations.

This page covers: Yaesu FT-900, Yaesu FT-900AT. They share the same firmware, so the steps below are identical on all of them whatever name is printed on the front.

What you can do on this radio

• Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes
• Connect the radio to a computer
• Set the drive level for digital modes
• Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door
• Turn on noise reduction
• Turn on the noise blanker
• Notch out a whistle or a carrier
• Work a DX station that is running split
• Save a frequency to a memory channel
• Run the antenna tuner
• Set the CW keyer speed and weight
• Reset the menu to factory settings

Set the radio up for FT8 and other digital modes on an FT-900

There is no data mode to select on this radio and no menu item to find. You transmit digital modes by feeding audio into a jack while the radio sits in an ordinary sideband mode, and the whole job is getting the levels and the sideband right.

1. Wire your interface to the DATA IN/OUT jack on the back rather than to the microphone connector.the DATA IN/OUT jack, rear panelThe screen should show: Nothing yet — this step is at the back of the radio.Yaesu recommends it directly, and gives the reason: with the microphone unplugged and the audio arriving at the rear jack, the shack noise that otherwise rides along on top of your signal cannot get in.
2. Set your interface to deliver 20 to 40 millivolts peak at the tip of that jack.20 to 40 mV peak into the DATA jackThe screen should show: Nothing on the radio — this is measured at the lead.The input impedance there is about 3 kilohms and those are the levels Yaesu specifies. Coming the other way, the jack puts out about 30 millivolts at 600 ohms, so your TNC or software may need its input turned down to match.
3. Put the radio in LSB.SSB›▲▼ LSBThe screen should show: LSB at the top of the display.Yaesu's own recommendation for AFSK on this radio is LSB with its 2.4 kHz bandwidth, for both transmit and receive. It keeps things simple and avoids needing the optional 500 Hz CW filter, which is what narrow-shift work would otherwise want.
4. Press AGC for the fast setting.AGCThe screen should show: The AGC indicator.Fast AGC is what the manual asks for here. Slow AGC riding over a data signal makes the decoder's life harder than it needs to be.
5. For AMTOR and F1 packet, make sure the VOX button is OFF.VOXThe screen should show: The VOX indicator is out.Watch out. 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.

One thing to keep in mind on a radio this old: the display shows the suppressed carrier frequency, so your actual transmitted signal sits below the number on the screen by the audio frequency of the tones your interface is generating. Modern software expects to be told a dial frequency and works the rest out, but if you are logging by hand, that offset is real and it is yours to remember.

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

Connect the radio to a computer on an FT-900

The FT-900 has computer control, and it is called CAT. What it does not have is a port you can plug a computer into directly, and that is the part that stops people.

1. Find the CAT jack on the rear panel, between the BAND DATA and TUNER connections.the CAT jack, rear panelThe screen should show: Nothing on the radio — this is at the back.The radio sends serial data at its own internal signal levels, not at the voltages a computer's serial port expects. The FIF-232C sits between the two and converts them, and the lead from the radio to it comes with the box.
2. Set your software to 4800 bits per second.4800 bps, set in your softwareThe screen should show: Nothing on the radio — there is no baud rate setting to change.Watch out. 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.
3. When the computer sends a command, a CAT indicator appears in the lower left corner of the display and then goes out again.watch the displayThe screen should show: CAT, briefly.That is the only feedback the radio gives, and it is genuinely useful — it separates a wiring problem from a software one. No CAT indicator means nothing is arriving at the radio at all.

Two practical notes for anyone doing this today. Yaesu never wrote control software for it, so what you will be using is a modern logger or digital program with an FT-900 selection — the command set has been public since the manual was printed. And a plain serial lead will not work in place of the converter box, however right the connectors look; the levels are wrong, and nothing will be damaged but nothing will happen either.

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

Set the drive level for digital modes on an FT-900

Yaesu gives an exact procedure for this and it is worth following in order, because two different controls set the level and it matters which one you use for what.

1. Unplug the microphone before you start.unplug the microphoneThe screen should show: No change.It keeps the room out of your signal, and it removes one variable while you are setting levels.
2. Preset the RF PWR control to about the twelve o'clock position.dial → RF PWR to 12 o'clockThe screen should show: No change until you transmit.A middle setting to start from. Power comes at the end of this procedure, not the beginning.
3. Press METER until the bargraph is showing ALC.METER›▲▼ ALCThe screen should show: The ALC scale.ALC is the transmitter telling you it is having to hold your signal back. On a data mode that is exactly what you do not want to see much of.
4. Key the transmitter from your software, and adjust MIC GAIN for an ALC reading of less than mid-scale.key the transmitter from the computer›dial → MIC GAINThe screen should show: The ALC bar, kept below halfway.Watch out. 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.
5. Only now set RF PWR for the power output you actually want.dial → RF PWRThe screen should show: The power output bargraph.This is the right order. Drive first, until the signal is clean; power second, to decide how much of that clean signal to send.

If the ALC bar is pinned no matter what you do to MIC GAIN, the level arriving from your interface is far too high, and the fix belongs at that end — Yaesu asks for 20 to 40 millivolts at the DATA jack. A hundred watts of clean signal beats a hundred watts of splatter, and on a mode where everyone can see your signal on a waterfall, the difference is public.

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

Narrow the filter to shut out the station next door on an FT-900

This is a crystal-filter radio, not a DSP one, so you do not set a width — you choose between the filters that are physically in it, and then move the passband around with a knob.

1. Pressing a mode button again selects the narrow filter for that mode, where one is fitted.the mode button, a second timeThe screen should show: NAR appears at the top of the display.The standard IF filter is 2.6 kHz, which is a good compromise for tuning around. The narrow selection is better once you have found somebody and the band is busy — on AM, for instance, the wide setting is 6 kHz for fidelity and the narrow one is 2.6 kHz for when the neighbours are in the way.
2. Then use the SHIFT control to slide the passband off the interference.dial → SHIFTThe screen should show: No indicator — you judge this by ear.IF shift moves the whole passband relative to the signal, so you can push an interfering station out of one edge while keeping the one you want inside. On a radio without variable bandwidth this control is doing most of the work, and it has an 11.2 kHz range to do it in.
3. If what is bothering you is a single whistle rather than a whole station, use the notch instead — it has its own page here.NOTCHThe screen should show: The NOTCH LED lights.Shift and notch solve different problems. Shift moves a wide interfering signal out of the passband; notch takes a single tone out of the middle of it.

What is actually inside the radio depends on what was ordered and on what anybody has fitted since. Two options are worth knowing about: the XF-110S crystal filter replaces the standard 2.6 kHz ceramic one and gives a flatter passband and better rejection of nearby signals, and a 500 Hz CW filter is what makes crowded CW and narrow-shift digital work comfortable. If you are buying a used FT-900, what filters are in it is a fair question to ask, because it changes the radio more than any setting does.

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

Turn on noise reduction on an FT-900

This radio does not have noise reduction, and no amount of hunting will find it. It was designed before DSP noise reduction was a thing a transceiver did, and there is no button, no control and no hidden combination for it. What it does have are three older tools that between them cover most of what you would reach for noise reduction to do.

1. For pulsing noise — ignition, a fence charger, a failing insulator — press NB for the noise blanker.NBThe screen should show: The NB LED lights.The blanker deals with pulses, which is a different problem from hiss. It is the only one of the three that removes noise rather than avoiding it.
2. For noise that is really an interfering signal, move the passband with SHIFT rather than trying to suppress it.dial → SHIFTThe screen should show: No indicator — judge it by ear.Half of what people call noise on a crowded band is somebody else's signal at the edge of the passband. Shifting it out is more effective than any processing would be.
3. On the low bands at night, try the IPO button, and the attenuator with it.IPOThe screen should show: The IPO or ATT indicator.When the band noise itself is strong, less gain at the front end can genuinely improve what you can copy. It sounds backwards and it works.

Being honest about the gap: on a quiet band with a weak signal buried in hiss, a modern radio with DSP noise reduction will do something this one cannot, and no setting here closes that gap. Outboard DSP speakers and audio filters were sold for exactly this reason and are still around second-hand. What the FT-900 gives you instead is a good receiver, a real IF notch and a proper shift control, and those handle the crowded-band problems that noise reduction is often asked to solve and is not very good at.

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

Turn on the noise blanker on an FT-900

One button, one LED, no settings behind it. That is the whole control, and the skill is in knowing when to leave it alone.

1. Press NB when you hear pulse noise. The LED stays lit while the blanker is on.NBThe screen should show: The NB LED.This circuit blanks both wide and narrow pulses, so it copes with a slow tick and a fast buzz alike — on many radios of this era you had to choose. It will also sometimes take the edge off static crashes from a distant storm.
2. If the signal you are listening to starts sounding distorted, press NB again and leave it off.NBThe screen should show: The NB LED goes out.Watch out. 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.

There is one hidden setting nearby that has nothing to do with noise but is easy to trip over: holding FAST and pressing NB sets the scanning speed, from 1 to 200 milliseconds. If you meant to switch the blanker on and the radio started asking about a number, that is what happened — press NB on its own.

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

Notch out a whistle or a carrier on an FT-900

A real IF notch, on a button and a knob, with no menu anywhere near it. Tune the signal in first — the notch is the last thing you reach for, not the first.

1. Tune the station in properly and set the IF shift first.dial → SHIFTThe screen should show: No indicator — judge it by ear.Yaesu's order, and it matters. Shift may move the whistle out of the passband on its own, and if it does you have solved the problem without narrowing anything.
2. Press the NOTCH button.NOTCHThe screen should show: The NOTCH LED lights.Watch out. It does nothing in FM. That is by design rather than a fault.
3. Turn the NOTCH control, which carries the same name as the button, until the heterodyne disappears.dial → the NOTCH controlThe screen should show: No display change — this one is entirely by ear.You are dragging a narrow hole across the passband until it lands on the tone. Go slowly: the null is sharp, and it is easy to sweep straight past it.
4. If the tone will not null at any setting, switch the notch off and go back to the shift control.NOTCH›dial → SHIFTThe screen should show: The NOTCH LED goes out.The notch reaches about 1.2 kHz either side of the centre of the passband and no further. A whistle beyond that is out of its range, and the answer is to shift the passband until the tone falls outside it entirely.

The 1.2 kHz limit is the thing to carry away, because it explains the one failure people run into. If a notch that works perfectly on most whistles simply refuses to touch a particular one, it is not broken and you are not missing a setting — that tone is too far off centre, and shift is the tool for it.

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

Work a DX station that is running split on an FT-900

Two VFOs, one button. Load them, press SPLIT, and the radio transmits on one and receives on the other. There is also a shortcut for small differences that is easier than split and often the right answer.

1. Set the mode and frequency you want to TRANSMIT on first.dial → the transmit frequencyThe screen should show: VFO-A and your transmit frequency.Yaesu's order, and it is worth following even though it feels backwards — you load transmit first, then move to the other VFO for receive.
2. Press A/B to move to the other VFO, and set the frequency and mode you want to LISTEN on.A/B›dial → the receive frequencyThe screen should show: VFO-B and your receive frequency.A/B swaps between the two VFOs without disturbing either one, so you can go back and forth as often as you like while setting up.
3. Press SPLIT.SPLITThe screen should show: The split indicator appears at the upper left of the display.Now you are receiving on the displayed VFO, and the moment you key up the display jumps to the other one — which is how you can see at a glance where you are about to transmit.
4. Use A/B while receiving to check your transmit frequency without transmitting.A/BThe screen should show: The other VFO, then back again.Listening to where you are about to call is the difference between finding a gap and landing on top of somebody. It costs nothing and it is the whole skill of working a pile-up.
5. For a difference of less than about 10 kHz, skip all of that and use the clarifier instead.CLAR›dial → the clarifierThe screen should show: The CLAR LED, and the offset on the display.Yaesu says outright that the clarifier is the easier approach when the two frequencies are close. One button and one knob, and nothing to set up or forget to turn off.

A detail worth knowing before you store anything: a memory on this radio holds a PAIR of frequencies and modes, plus the split status itself. So a split arrangement can be saved whole and recalled whole — set both VFOs, press SPLIT, then store, and the memory brings the pair back the way you left them.

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

Save a frequency to a memory channel on an FT-900

Storing is a tap, then a choice, then a hold — and there is a three-second window in the middle that catches everybody the first time.

1. Make sure a VFO is displayed rather than a memory, then set the frequency and mode you want to store.V/M›set the frequency and modeThe screen should show: VFO-A or VFO-B at the left, and your frequency.
2. Tap the V to M button once — a short press, not a hold.V to MThe screen should show: M CK blinks above the memory channel number.That blinking is the radio asking which channel you mean. It is a check, not a save.
3. Within three seconds, use the DOWN and UP buttons to choose the channel.▲▼ the channel numberThe screen should show: The channel number at the right, and either its contents or a blank display if it is empty.Watch out. 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.
4. Now hold V to M for half a second, until two beeps sound.hold V to MThe screen should show: Two beeps, and the memory is written.Watch out. 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.
5. To store both VFOs at once — a split pair, or a repeater's two frequencies — press SPLIT first, then hold V to M.SPLIT›hold V to MThe screen should show: Both halves of the memory written together.Each memory here holds a pair. Storing them one at a time works, but this copies VFO-A and VFO-B into both halves in a single move, which is faster and much harder to get half-right.

There are 100 memories: 90 ordinary ones numbered 01 to 90, and ten more labelled P1 to P0 that hold band limits for programmed scanning rather than working frequencies. Each one keeps rather more than a frequency — the mode, the wide or narrow filter choice, the clarifier and offset settings, and whether split was on. Press V/M to check what you just stored; if you have retuned a recalled memory, pressing V/M once puts the original contents back and pressing it again returns you to the VFO.

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

Run the antenna tuner on an FT-900

One button does two different jobs depending on how long you hold it, and that distinction is the whole of operating this tuner.

1. The first time you tune on a new antenna, turn RF PWR down to about the nine o'clock position — or twelve o'clock above 24.5 MHz.dial → RF PWR to 9 o'clockThe screen should show: No change until you transmit.Yaesu asks for this to keep the interference down and to spare the tuner, feedline and antenna in case the SWR turns out to be bad. Once the tuner knows the antenna you can put the power back.
2. Press METER twice so the bargraph shows SWR, and check the frequency is clear.METER›METERThe screen should show: The SWR scale.Watch out. 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.
3. Hold TUNER for half a second to bring the tuner in line and start it looking for a match.hold TUNERThe screen should show: The TUNER and WAIT indicators appear, and the TRANSMIT LED goes red for up to thirty seconds.The radio drops itself to 50 watts while it searches, so this is safe to do at full power settings. When WAIT disappears it has finished, and you can transmit.
4. A momentary tap of the same button — under half a second — switches the tuner in and out of circuit without tuning.TUNERThe screen should show: The TUNER indicator appears or disappears.Watch out. 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.

The tuner keeps 31 settings of its own, so once it has learned an antenna it recalls the match by itself whenever you come back to that part of the band — you will see WAIT flash briefly while receiving as it does. On a new antenna it knows nothing, so press TUNER each time you move to a new range until it has been round the bands once. And if HI SWR appears, the tuner has given up: no setting will fix that, and the answer is another frequency or a look at the antenna and feedline.

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

Set the CW keyer speed and weight on an FT-900

Speed is a knob on the front panel, which is a pleasure after a menu. Weight is one of the hidden button combinations, which is not.

1. Press KEYER so the LED above it comes on.KEYERThe screen should show: The KEYER LED lights.That switches the internal iambic keyer in. With it off, the KEY jack still works but you are sending everything by hand.
2. Squeeze the paddles and turn the SPEED control just to the left of the button until it feels right.dial → SPEEDThe screen should show: No display — you set this by ear.A knob you can reach for mid-contact, which is exactly what you want. Send a string of dits while you turn it.
3. For the weighting, hold FAST and press IPO, turn the tuning knob to choose, then press IPO again.hold FAST›IPO›dial → on or off›IPOThe screen should show: on or oFF on the display.Off is 1:1:3, the default, and on is 1:1:4.5 — longer dashes, which many people find easier to read at speed. Nothing on the front panel tells you this exists.
4. The sidetone pitch and the CW offset are set together the same way: hold FAST, press ATT, choose between 400 and 1000 Hz, then press ATT again.hold FAST›ATT›▲▼ 400 to 1000 Hz›ATTThe screen should show: The pitch in Hz.It is 700 Hz by default. Because offset and sidetone move together, tuning a station until its note matches your sidetone puts it exactly on frequency — which is how you spot on this radio.

One thing that stops people before any of this matters: the transmitter will not key at all unless VOX or BK-IN is switched on. The manual states it plainly for both straight-key and keyer work, and a keyer that produces a sidetone and no output is almost always this. Semi and full break-in are chosen with the same two buttons.

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

Reset the menu to factory settings on an FT-900

There is no menu to reset on this radio, so a reset here means the whole thing at once. Before you do it, remember that every hidden setting is a toggle — so if you know which one you changed, undoing it is easier and cheaper than starting over.

1. Switch the radio off.POWERThe screen should show: Dark.
2. Hold the UP and DOWN buttons together and switch the radio on with them held.hold UP›hold DOWN›POWERThe screen should show: The radio starts up cleared, with memory 1 and the VFOs on 7.000 MHz LSB.Watch out. 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.
3. The alternative, and usually the better one: repeat whichever power-up combination you used before.hold the button for that setting›POWERThe screen should show: The setting flips back.Every one of those power-up settings is a straight toggle, so doing exactly the same thing again returns it to where it was. There is no value to remember and nothing else is disturbed.

Worth knowing what a reset will and will not fix. It will fix a radio that behaves strangely because somebody has been through the hidden tables — a display missing its 10 Hz digit, a FAST button that latches, a beeper that has gone silent. It will not fix anything mechanical or anything in the receiver, and a fault that survives a full reset is a fault, not a setting. If the memories matter, write down the ones you use before you do this, because there is no way to get them back afterwards.

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