Yaesu FT-450 New Arrival

A famous internet auction site does it again!

Last week, I was pleased to sell my trusty TS50s - for slightly more than I paid three years ago for it - to an aircraft radio engineer who will give it a caring new home. 

The TS50 was great, but not a rig easily amenable to modern digital modes.  I used a TS480 for that.

As luck would have it, a hardly-touched FT450 came up on same famous internet auction site for just £100 more, and with just a single bid placed two hours before the end, I 'won' the unit.  I think most butted-out of bidding because they thought it was an ATU-less unit, whereas it actually had the internal ATU fitted. 

A lovely little rig!

 
It arrived within just a day of posting, and is already in full service on all modes.  It's immediately evident that the FT450 is much more stable than the TS480, which has been my main rig until now.  You can send digimodes all day long on the temperature-compensated Yaesu, and it drifts not a jot.  The TS480, in comparison, drifts away like a mad thing, demanding about $100 for an add-on TXCO that, by many accounts, isn't very stable.

The audio on the Yaesu is very good on external speaker and particularly on headphones, and after some tweaking, matches the excellent output of the TS480.  Audio out, always a major Kenwood strength, seems OK on the Yaesu, but that will take more testing.

As is reported by a few ops, the internal speaker resonates to voice on SSB, which is apparently due to poor mounting of some components.  It's no big deal, and can easily be fixed or overridden with an external speaker, which most of us probably use anyway.

Controls on the Yaesu are much more sensibly laid out than the Kenwood.  The LCD display is informative, bright and large, but the contrast could be better, despite a wide adjustment range. 

So I've been surprised that the TS480, an excellent rig despite its desperately lazy 'S' meter and tendency to drift with temperature, has been ousted within a day as the main station rig!  Instead, it seems destined to be the portable rig, though it was never really well thought-out for that purpose, having awkward-to-access external connections.

Well done Yaesu!  I'll give you more thought the next time I upgrade to a larger rig!