Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Yaesu FT2DR Transmitting APRS Beacon Manually

I'm enjoying the FT2DR. It's a solid radio, good audio output and overall well designed.

However I did have some confusion on how to transmit APRS info, namely a manual beacon text transmit.

I had set up the GPS, my APRS callsign, the beacon text and I programmed 144.390 in the B VFO.

After I acquired a GPS signal, I tried to press the soft key that would manually transmit my beacon info/text. All I received was an error beep.

I rechecked my settings and everything looked okay.

My Mode was set to FM (with a line over the top of the letters FM) Auto Mode Select  (AMS). I decided to switch off the AMS. So now the  mode displayed was just the letters FM with no line over the letters.

This worked! I was able to send an APRS beacon text message!


So you can't have AMS enabled when your using APRS.  LUCKILY you can set AMS on for the VFO A and have it off on VFO B at the same time.

Notice the A VFO has AMS on, while the
B VFO has AMS off. 


FT2DR APRS Manual



73  Jay AB1II