I went to a club meeting last night that featured a presentation on Yaesu System Fusion. It was given by Chris Wilson, the national sales manage for Yaesu America.
During the presentation software for the FT-2DR came up and he stated that "Yaesu is a radio manufacturing company, not a software company."
That's too bad that Yaesu, The Radio, has such a poor attitude towards a high end product that they are putting much effort into convincing prospective purchases of subscriber equipment to shell out $450 a pop to buy and say, "buy your own software, we don't care"
The digital ham radio market is flooded with disparate systems: D-Star, System Fusion, DMR, NXDN, and P25.
The competition give away fully functional software (DMR ham specific radios like the Connect Systems and Tytera), Icom even provides free software with their D-Star products. Hams expect to be able to program and configure their radios "out of the box" without having to shell out more money for third party software. Again, at the price point these radios sell for, it is not unreasonable to provide basic but fully functional software. If Yaesu is going to take that attitude, then pull the half-butt files off their site and post a link to RT Systems or (whatever third party vendor) and call it a day.
I ended up buying the FT-2D Programmer from RT via Digital Download for $25 tonight. Programmed my FT-2D in about 30 minutes. There are a couple of Fusion machines in town, including one setup for digital in- analog out.
R2AJP, thanks for posting this workaround. Again, annoying that a "radio company" sells a high tier product with garbage software, but hey, don't let that dissuade you from getting an FT-2DR. It is still a great radio.