??? Believe that could only apply to
programming issues and reports are that the Chirp people will help
there. No affect on the mechanicals, and I haven't myslef seen
reports of people going to Yaesu for warranty programming issues.
??? Christian KD2LIN
On 8/1/2020 2:39 PM, Chuck Moore via
groups.io wrote:
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The fly in the ointment is if Yaesu will help if programming
problems occurs. They provide their own cable for a fee to
clone but I did not see anything about programming the?
radio, just cloning. So if you are programming the radio then
a problem occurs with programming or operation following
the programming attempt, Yaesu may decide to not honor?
any warranty for the radio.?
On August 1, 2020 at 2:13 PM, "Rick Levine"
<rick@...>
wrote:
Apologies in advance, Clint, for using your
well-intentioned response as a starting point for this
note. Your statement "CHIRP has been known to ¡°brick¡±
several models of Yaesu radios - a well-documented
phenomenon¡± doesn¡¯t ring true to me, and doesn¡¯t reflect
my own experience.
In fairness, here¡¯s another quote from Dan
Smith, developer of CHIRP, source here:?
No, CHIRP will not
intentionally let you brick radios and we know of no
circumstances where it has done it. There are plenty of
urban legends out there about people that think
something has happened and been caused by any number of
factors. I'm not aware of anyone having approached the
chirp team with a bricked radio and a demonstrable
process by which it happened.
Yaesu radios are very fragile (they don't
fully reset their own memories when you do a factory
reset, for example), so there's always a possibility
that you could do something that would confuse the
radio and not be able to reset it. Even though I've
severely confused them while developing for them, I've
never had one I couldn't recover. Other brands are far
more robust in this regard and are pretty much
bulletproof.
There have been issues, beyond CHIRP, with buggy,
factory-installed FT-60 firmware but they¡¯re old news,
circa 2014.
Using untried cables with any radio you depend
on is probably a bad idea. Having acquired a set of
reliable interface cables for whatever families of radios
you own and program, the advantage to using CHIRP is
having one software application and interface for
programming across a range of manufacturers' radios.?
In addition, while I understand the economic
appeal to RT Systems of a ¡°one radio, one application¡±
business strategy, the net effect to me, as an amateur
operator on a budget, is charging me a $25 tax for
software for each model of radio I wish to program.?
If you only have one radio to program, with
little expectation of expanding your collection, the
choice between RT Systems and CHIRP isn¡¯t consequential.
As your radio stable becomes larger, it becomes less and
less tenable to ignore CHIRP.
If you¡¯re squeamish about cable quality, spend
$30 for an RT Systems cable for each radio type you own.
(And NB, one cable might serve for multiple radio models
from a single manufacturer.)
If you¡¯re finding CHIRP to be frustrating to
install or use, find a local elmer to walk you through the
process or program the radio for you the first time, and
save off a code plug and CSV files for you. (And sorry I
don¡¯t have a my starting notes for using CHIRP with an
FT-60 in front of me to be able to share them. It *was*
frustrating the first time or two I used it, and isn¡¯t as
well documented as I might like it to be, but it¡¯s a very
useful app, with good support.)
$0.02
Rick
KK6WHJ
***
CHIRP has been known to ¡°brick¡± several
models of Yaesu radios - a well-documented
phenomenon.
I, too, have experimented with CHIRP - on a spare
FT-60R.
?But from the CHIRP web site ...
¡°We receive no help from the vendors or
manufacturers of the radios, and as such our
drivers are developed by reverse-engineering.
There is some risk involved in that, but
everything carries some amount of risk (like
buying the cheapest possible programming cable
from questionable eBay vendors to program your
expensive radio with). As with anything that is
widely deployed and used by regular people, over
time urban legends have developed about CHIRP,
how it works, and how it is or is not dangerous
to use. The internet gives anyone a soap box to
stand on, and it places everyone on an equal
footing, regardless of their actual level of
understanding of the thing they're talking
about. CHIRP comes with no warranty (or cost!)
and you are always using it at your own risk ...
¡°
Personally and professionally, I recommend
RTSystems¡¯ software and cables ...
--
Clint Bradford K6LCS
http//
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