Monday, March 12, 2018

Yaesu System Fusion (YSF)

It seems that Yaesu has learned from the ARRL.  Their youtube channel has comments turned off, and their yahoo group is moderated.

I tried to make some comments on their firmware updateable radios.  This is a concept I wrote about a long time ago.  Obviously if it was something open to 3rd party development like how the WRT-54 series router hardware turned out to be, then it would be truly awesome.  But that isn't realistic I suppose.  So short of buying one to give to Travis Goodspeed who has hacked the MD380, that likely won't be happening any time soon.

I was envisioning Yaesu later adding features like the ability to listen to ATSC TV audio.  I miss the days of when things were a bit dull on the ham bands, tuning over to the TV audio channels while at work with my VX-5.

It is truly a shame that they haven't/won't at least add D-Star receive support at the very least.  I have to say I had hope for them early on.  Maybe it was because I realized they are now solely an amateur company and unlike the others do not have a commercial line to supplement their bottom line.  At that time some of us where hoping when there were not saying a whole lot about their introduction to the ham digital market, that C4FM meant there might be a chance of whatever they unveiled would be backwards compatible with P25 or DMR.  Instead they further contributed to the digital fragmentation problem, but unveiling yet another format that is totally incompatible with anything else.  And that stubborn / bullheadedness unfortunately continues but not embracing and adding support for other modes like DMR or D-Star, in addition to their moderated/censored comment approach.

I'd sure like to see someone do it... And they'd seem like a good candidate, as they are solely ham, with no commercial line anymore... You cant tell me that it wouldn't sell and boost their name.

I can't say their digital mode or any of the other really interest me a whole lot till we have someone willing to embrace these interoperability concepts.  So the only things that I think are worth my time and money are things like MMDVM, OP25, and XLX cross connect reflectors.

Till then its old school thinking that continuing their segregation approach to digital somehow helps their bottom line. When in fact I tend to think if they would add support for another digital mode, they would have a hot selling radio.