Yaesu FT 2000
In the last year and half I have owned this radio, I did give a moderate review when I first received this radio, but now I feel the time is right for another full-fledged review.
If you are in the market for a rig, give the 2000 a good look, but wait ask your self a couple of questions before you spend your hard earned dollars.
Would the 100-watt version suit my needs, or do I really need that 200-watt model?
Let’s take a look at the differences in the two models, for one fact the 200 watt model and that is the 2000D has an outboard power supply, additional finals, more circuitry and the analog meter indicates a 200 watt scale. Now this is going to cost you more money and for about a half s unit in actual difference of receive levels.
Remember s units are six db steps, doubling the power produces a three-db rise in received strength and that amounts to a half an s unit.
One also has to ask your self if linear amps requiring 100 watts, or less to drive them to full legal limit, why then would I need two hundred watts? The answer is you do not, over driving an amp will cause splatter, shorten tube life, or blow some component in the amp.
The extra hundred watts will cost you about a thousand bucks roughly, but it is your money and you just must have a 200 watt model, then go for it.
Now that we have this issue on the table, how do I like the radio? It is one fantastic machine and I am amazed at what I hear on all bands.
The FT 2k has two antenna ports and one receive only port in the rear of the unit, this is handy having the two antenna ports, I have my 2k on two antennas, a forty meter folded dipole at 70 feet and my six meter six ele at 78 feet. I do not have to worry about switching antennas from 40 to six, the radio does it for me and that is a big plus.
Let me mention the Rx only port and its purpose, some fellows like the idea of diversity antennas and for those 160 meter dxers they prefer to use a Beverage antenna for receiving. In effect, this is a very long wire. For the most part, you will receive and transmit on the same antenna, but if you need to construct a separate antenna for receive, you have an extra port for this purpose.
The FT 2k has the standard features one would expect these days, memory keyer, voice keyer, audio gain, power level, roofing filter, stock is 3khz, shift, width and notch filter. Noise blanker. plus speech processor, plus a selection of one, or two preamps. A sub receiver with the following controls, noise blanker, band change, mode select, agc select fast and slow. Direct keypad entry for frequency select, large numerical readout both on main VFO and slightly smaller on the second vfo. RX and TX offset controls giving ten KHz plus or minus. A TW watch feature when you are in split mode may be helpful to Dxers in an expedition, or rare entity operating split.
Let’s take a few minutes and talk about the preamps in the 2k, there have been some reports on various ham sites about failure of these F.E.T preamps. But, I am skeptical of these failures because I agree with Yaesu that it can result from mistreating the unit. I can think of several ways to blow out the front end of your radio. One, keeping antennas plugged in during thunderstorms, yes, that will do it.
Make shift antennas, single wire stuck in to the coax connector producing rf on the chassis, improper grounding, mistake in hookup of your station resulting in rf being fed into the antenna connector on the rear of the radio. Lastly of course is qsk a radio that will run qsk, but a linear that will not, results, hard spikes return to the output connector on the radio and what do you knows? Blown Preamps.
I do not run qsk, I just do not like it, I find it very annoying, and so this is not a problem with my 2k. I run a resonant antenna and proper grounding, I have yet to have a problem with my preamps in over a year and half of using this rig.
Another comment I wish to make is about the VRF control, this is a selected feature, now of course you have the standard RF control. The VRF peaks the signal received in steps and this is how I have set mine for maximum effect. I prefer to have my rig peaked for DX signals, therefore I turn the standard RF control at maximum, set the AGC to slow and peak the VRF. This is rather hard to notice any real difference on a received signal, so if you tune off to an unused channel, then watch the s meter for a peak in the noise level while adjusting the VRF. This control acts in the same way as the attenuator step control, but not as drastic, you can peak the signal you are listening to, or in the case of a very strong signal decrease the number of s units and interference.
For the most part I have peaked this control, then forgot about it, it returns to the peak setting for each band I have set it. You can of course use it to lessen the strength of very strong signals, but you may prefer the use of the attenuator in drastic steps.
Another mention is that of the contour and APF adjustments, contour reacts on the skirt of the received signal; you can move towards one side band, or the other and eliminate interference. APF reacts on the audio of the signal and can eliminate interference as well; you should experiment with these controls and see what they do for certain and how effective they will be for your operation.
The noise blanker and the digital noise reduction are quite effective as is the digital noise filter; however using the DNF in the cw mode causes the signal to flatten out, virtually no audio response. Use this feature on ssb and the DNR on cw.
So how does the FT 2k perform on the air, well to say one word, fantastic!
Weak signals are really pulled out of the noise and of course on cw you can narrow down the bandpass to 50 kHz. I normally run 300 Hz bandwidth in cw contests. On ssb I have used 2.7 kHz for the most part, taking down the bandwidth to about 1.8 to my ears reduces the audio response and is harder to copy then with the Interference.
Another feature I should mention and love it, there is an icon to indicate that you are zero beat with a cw signal, no more guess work, you can tell the stations that are off frequency by the icon indicator and each division represents about 50 Hz. On ssb, this icon is not functional; you have to use the ears for the proper and pleasing pitch.
For those of you working six meters this rig does perform, with two preamps it really pulls out the signals on six couple this with a good antenna system and you have a winner.
I have compared the 2k with my 5k for receiver sensitivity and they are very close to one another, plus I have compared accuracy of the VFO readout on both radios. Both are in total agreement with one another.
I have also compared received signals with both radios; I did this with the same antenna, aimed in the same direction. With the preamps on and that were both of them the FT 2k and FT 5k were identical in their signal strength indicated on the s meter of each radio.
The microvolt sensitivity for both the 2k and 5 k is 2/10 of a microvolt on every band 160-10 meters, on six the sensitivity is .125 microvolts, this is with the preamps on using both of them.
The transmit audio of the 2k is excellent, you can adjust the audio response with the equalizer in the radio and you can tune the audio response for your voice, or how you want to sound. I prefer the mid range settings not too much bass, but just enough, not too much emphasis on the highs, but just enough to cut through the noise and static levels on certain days.
The voice keyer is clean with no bit noise, however it does take a little work to get the audio record level and the transmit audio level from the voice keyer correct. Once that is done, you set and forget.
The only negative for the 2k is the internal speaker, I rarely use it since I operate with headphones, however if you must use a speaker find a good external speaker and go with it. Those built in speakers are in the top of the transceiver, they project the sound upward, instead of in an outward direction. The quality is not that good, so if you must use the speaker find a good external one and you will be happy.
One more feature that I find helpful is the mode select switches, if you depress say cw, one of the buttons indicating USB, or LSB will flash for a few times. This indicates what side of the signal you are listening. You can switch sidebands if you have interference some times I use the main receiver on one side of the signal when I am working cw and the sub receiver on the other sideband. I determine which side is better and select the one I want. Personally, I think the 2k is a very good choice for the newer ham and the old seasoned veteran, I am impressed with this radio and was even more impressed with the 5k. I plan to leave this review on the web site for a while, and then write one for the 5k as well. Both are fantastic rigs, and I have few negative comments.
If any one has questions about this radio, or if I missed something you would like to know about, drop me a line on the web site.
Bill K4LRX
