Yaesu: New ham help with Yaesu Ft-710

[ttkoestner]

Need some help with my new Yaesu FT 710. I just got it the other day and have been checking out all features and settings. I don't have my wire antenna installed yet so have been using it on my Sirio vector 4000 vertical. It is resonant around 27.205 so have been using it around the 10 and 11 meter bands only. I was checking out the power output on the radio's meter and it seems very low. Yes the radio is set for max power, 100w on HF. It seems like I'm getting around 60-80 watts on FM. SSB is only swinging to maybe, 30 watts max. Did a reset on radio, same thing. Is this meter very inaccurate or do have something set wrong? SWR is low around 1.1 Been trying to call Yaesu customer service, phone just rings. Thanks in advance Tom

 

[AK9R]

I assume by "swinging" you mean that when you speak into the microphone with the radio in SSB mode, you are looking at the power output meter.

Because SSB has no carrier, power output on SSB is very dependent on the audio going into the modulator. In general, to get full output, you'll need to increase the microphone gain or use compression. Assuming that you can put the meter into a mode where it shows ALC, key up and speak into the microphone. You may need to increase the mic gain, but you don't want the ALC reading to exceed it's maximum value.

A more reliable way of checking power output is to put the radio into a continuous carrier mode such as FM, RTTY, or CW. When you key the radio in one of those modes, you should see full power.

Also, transmitter power output testing is usually done into a dummy load. A good dummy load will eliminate the reactive load that an antenna may present.

 

[ttkoestner]

I assume by "swinging" you mean that when you speak into the microphone with the radio in SSB mode, you are looking at the power output meter.

Because SSB has no carrier, power output on SSB is very dependent on the audio going into the modulator. In general, to get full output, you'll need to increase the microphone gain or use compression. Assuming that you can put the meter into a mode where it shows ALC, key up and speak into the microphone. You may need to increase the mic gain, but you don't want the ALC reading to exceed it's maximum value.

A more reliable way of checking power output is to put the radio into a continuous carrier mode such as FM, RTTY, or CW. When you key the radio in one of those modes, you should see full power.

Also, transmitter power output testing is usually done into a dummy load. A good dummy load will eliminate the reactive load that an antenna may present.

Thanks for the reply, lots of good info. I'm sure the radio is fine, it's brand new. Just coming from 11 meters I'm use to seeing a meter move up and down quite a bit. Looking forward to getting my end fed wire up, and getting down on some lower freq's. So far just 10 meters and not much going on there.