Reported on an FTDX101: with RX and TX moved together to the sub VFO, OpsLog
showed split — and took the MAIN frequency as the transmit one, which would log
the wrong frequency.
ST is a bare flag. It says "split" without saying which VFO transmits, and this
rig raises it whenever the transmit VFO is the sub one, whether or not the
operator is also listening there. FT names the transmit VFO, so where the receive
VFO is known as well (FR), split is derived from the pair: they differ or they do
not. That is a fact about the rig's state rather than a flag whose meaning varies
by model.
The fix is therefore in the probe ORDER, not in the reading: FT is asked first
when FR answered, and ST stays the fallback for rigs that have neither. A test
pins the order and both halves of the trap — that FT gets this case right, and
that ST alone gets it wrong.
The seven minutes of reconnects in the operator's log turned out to be the radio
switched off — no defect. But the log said otherwise:
20:14:42 yaesu: ID query failed (timeout) — continuing…
20:14:44 yaesu: connected on COM7 @ 38400 baud, model="FTDX101D"
Opening the port was treated as connecting, and the model name was left over from
the previous session, so a powered-down rig produced a line claiming it was
connected as a named model. That is what sent me looking for a software fault.
Connect now tracks whether ANY probe answered. If none did, it clears the stale
model, says so in terms an operator can act on — is it powered on, is the CAT
rate right — and returns an error so the reconnect loop keeps trying rather than
believing it succeeded.
Connect assigned a fresh handle to y.port without closing the one it already
held. It is called again on every reconnect, so a rig that fails to answer leaks
one handle per attempt — every few seconds, indefinitely.
Windows opens a serial port EXCLUSIVELY, which makes this visible as "yaesu: open
COM7 @ 9600 baud: Serial port busy" in an operator's log: OpsLog was competing
with itself for the port.
This is a real defect found while reading the reconnect loop, but I want to be
straight about its limits: it does NOT explain the seven minutes of "ID query
failed — timeout" in the same log, where the port opened and the rig stayed
silent. That one is still open, and the operator alternates between two separate
radios (a TCI SDR and the Yaesu) rather than sharing one port, so a conflict
between backends is not the explanation either.
Reported both ways round, which is what settles it. With RX and TX on SUB
everything worked; with them on MAIN the frequency froze and a spot click tuned
the sub VFO. The log shows the rig answering FR01 in the MAIN case.
So on an FTDX101 the state is the FIRST digit — 0 = main — and the second is a
separate parameter. Yesterday I changed this to the LAST digit, which read FR01
as SUB and inverted the whole thing. The fault that change was meant to fix ("SUB
shows MAIN") came from reading VS instead of FR, and probing FR had already fixed
it on its own; the digit change was an unnecessary guess layered on a real fix.
Nothing else needed changing for the operator's two questions: the display and
SetFrequency already follow curVFO, so a spot now tunes whichever VFO holds RX
and TX, and the main frequency is read when on main. A test states that in those
terms — active VFO and which command a spot writes — rather than only as a byte,
because the byte is what I got wrong while believing the logic was right.
The log named the cause in one line: yaesu: receive VFO is read through FR
(answered "FR01;"). An FTDX10 answers "FR0;" — one digit — so reading the digit
straight after the prefix worked there and took the 0 of "01" on an FTDX101.
The rig was on SUB and OpsLog said MAIN, which is the reported "Sub shows the main
frequency". It also explains the second half: split is "TX VFO differs from RX
VFO", so a receive VFO that alternated between right and wrong made the split flag
flip between consecutive polls and swap freq and rx in the log.
The state is now taken from the LAST digit before the terminator, which is correct
on both forms, and the same reading applies to ST/FT/VS rather than leaving the
next two-digit rig to be found in the field.
On the operator's question of whether freq should simply be the active VFO: no —
freq is the TRANSMIT frequency by ADIF convention (FREQ is the QSO frequency,
FREQ_RX the receive one, set only when split). In simplex they are the same, so it
does read as the active VFO; in split it must stay the transmit VFO or the log
records the wrong frequency. What the operator saw was this bug, not that rule.
The operator's description separates the two cases precisely, and that is what
identifies the fault. RX alone on SUB displayed VFO B correctly; RX AND TX on
SUB — entirely on the sub receiver — displayed VFO A.
VS was being read as "which VFO is in use". On an FTDX101 it does not answer that
question: with both RX and TX on sub it still reported the main VFO. FR is the
command that selects the RECEIVE VFO, and it is now asked first, VS remaining the
fallback for models that lack it.
Split falls out of the same correction: split means the TRANSMIT VFO differs from
the RECEIVE one, so a wrong receive VFO made the comparison wrong too — which is
the second half of what was reported. A test covers all four RX/TX combinations,
including the one that is NOT split (both on sub) and reads as split if you take
the transmit VFO alone.
Reported on an FTDX101: the panel showed split ON with the radio OFF, and the
reverse — while the same model behaved correctly for another operator, and an
FTDX10 was fine throughout. That pattern is the clue: one operator was on MAIN,
the other on SUB.
The two commands say different things and were read alike:
ST is a split FLAG — ST1 means split, whatever VFO is in use.
FT names the TX VFO — FT0 = transmit on A, FT1 = transmit on B.
Split is on when the rig transmits on a DIFFERENT VFO from the one it listens to.
Reading FT1 as "split" is therefore correct only on VFO A, and exactly inverted
on SUB. It is now compared with the current VFO.
Writing had the identical fault, and it was worse: sending FT1 for "split on"
while the operator listened on SUB CLEARED the split it was asked to set. Both
directions are pinned by tests over each VFO state.
A quarter-per-poll decay covers the milliseconds between CW elements but not the
gaps that matter on the air: between the words of a CQ, in CW as in SSB, the
meters genuinely read 0 for most of a second and the bars fell with them.
A peak now stands for 1.5 s before it starts to fall, and still rises instantly —
a needle goes up fast and comes down slow. The SWR RATIO is not updated at all
from a zero reading: showing 1.0 during a word gap is worse than showing a stale
figure, because it looks like good news.
A test caught a real defect on the way: the proportional decay stalls on
integers. With the needle at 13 and the truth at 10, a quarter of the gap rounds
to zero and the meter sat three units high for ever. It now always steps down by
at least one, so it converges.
The one-shot survey fired as the transmission began and caught the meters still
at rest — RM4=13 and everything else zero, which identifies nothing. And the
operator's reading points the other way: the bar showing 81 tracks his 100 W,
while the one labelled power sat at 8.
What names a meter is which index FOLLOWS the power over a few seconds of steady
carrier, so the survey now samples on every poll while transmitting, capped at a
dozen lines. Two seconds of tune will settle it.
Still not guessing at the mapping: the numbers will say which index is power and
which is SWR on this radio, and it gets corrected then.
Speed: with DTR/RTS line keying the PC does the timing, so the Yaesu console's
slider — which sets the rig's internal keyer — changed nothing audible and looked
broken. Both entry points now go through one handler that drives the engine
actually sending, and additionally sets the rig's own keyer whenever a Yaesu is
on CAT, so the radio's front panel shows the same figure.
SWR: an operator reads 80 on the bar with a real SWR of 1.1. That is the shape of
reading the WRONG METER — ALC, say — not of a scaling error, and which RM index
carries which meter is not consistent across the family. Rather than guess again
and move the wrong number somewhere else, the first transmission now logs RM1
through RM6 raw, once. The log will say which index is which on this radio, and
the mapping can then be corrected as a fact.
The log timed it exactly: the CW send at 13:16:17.591, the CAT dropping at
13:16:17.633, forty milliseconds later.
An accepted KY says nothing, but a REJECTED one answers "?;" — and nobody was
reading it. The frame sat in the buffer until the poll loop's next query picked
it up, failed, and the Manager tore the link down. That is the disconnect on
every macro click, and it also explains the silence: the backend was being
rebuilt underneath the send.
Two changes. The KY write is now followed by a short read: silence means
accepted, "?;" means refused — and the operator is told so, naming MENU → CW →
PC KEYING, instead of getting nothing with no reason. And FA; retries once when
it meets a stray rejection, because a "?;" arriving there is almost never about
FA: the rig answers frequency queries perfectly well, it is the previous
command's refusal being attributed to this one.
This does not yet prove the FTDX10 accepts KY at all. It makes the next run say
so plainly either way, which is the point.
The log settled it: the rig answers "?;" — its "unknown command" — to KY; and to
MG;. So the keyer status query cannot work on this model, and every send spent
four seconds waiting for an answer that was never coming.
"?;" is now recognised as what it is. A command refused once is never asked
again: models implement different subsets, and re-asking costs a 600 ms timeout
on every slow beat for a control that will never answer — which is also why the
panel felt sluggish.
Without a buffer status there is still a real constraint: one KY command carries
24 characters and the rig DROPS the rest silently. So the send is now paced by
how long the text takes to key, from PARIS timing at the rig's own speed. A long
macro goes out complete instead of losing its tail.
That leaves the question the log cannot answer: whether KY <text>; itself is
accepted. If the rig also replies "?;" to it, the CAT menu's PC KEYING setting is
the next suspect — but nothing in the code will be guessing at it.
Clicking a macro dropped the CAT for a few seconds, keyed nothing, then came
back.
ask() returned the first ';'-terminated frame it saw, whatever command it
belonged to. KY produces NO reply, so the next query — FA; from the poll loop —
collected a leftover frame, failed to parse it as a frequency, and ReadState
reported an error. The Manager reads that as "lost the rig": disconnect, wait,
reconnect. Hence the drop and the automatic recovery a few seconds later.
Replies are now matched to the command that asked for them: anything else is
discarded and logged, so a stray frame costs one log line instead of the link.
This also explains the silence — the send never got a clean run at the port
while the backend was being torn down under it.
Three corrections from the operator's second pass.
The sideband gesture was wrong: I used double-click, which hides the action.
Clicking a button that is ALREADY active now flips its sideband — CW-U → CW-L →
CW-U. One button, one finger, nothing to discover.
A lit SPLIT chip does not tell an operator anything useful: it says split is on,
not where they transmit. The header now shows the TX frequency and the offset in
kHz whenever split is active.
And the offset that matters is set in one action: up 1 kHz on CW, up 5 kHz on
phone. Doing it by hand means swapping VFOs, retuning and swapping back — exactly
the fumbling a panel exists to remove. Both are offered rather than picked from
the mode, because which one is idiomatic is the operator's call, and the button
turns split on at the same time.
The offset is measured from the RECEIVE frequency and written to the VFO we are
not listening on, so it stays correct when the operator works on VFO B, where the
roles are mirrored.
First look on the FTDX10 turned up six things:
The S meter printed a raw percentage — "57" tells an operator nothing, and it is
the S number that goes into a report. It now reads S1-S9/S9+dB, the same value
the click-to-fill RST already used.
CW, RTTY and the data modes exist on BOTH sidebands and the operator is the one
who knows which they want. The buttons now carry the rig's actual sideband and a
double-click flips it; PSK is added, riding the rig's DATA mode as it does on the
radio itself. This also means the mode row drives the rig directly (MD0 with the
exact mode) instead of going through the ADIF path, which could only pick a
sideband by convention.
The attenuator is a 6/12/18 dB pad on these rigs, not the single step I assumed —
two thirds of the control was unreachable.
Sliders had no visible filled side: --muted is barely lighter than the card it
sits on, so the whole track read as one bar. They also came in three kinds (two
bare range inputs among them). One component now, explicit track colour, and it
takes a min/max so power in watts and DNR 1-15 look like the rest.
The panel stretched across the whole window; it is a column of controls, so it is
now capped and every row stays readable.
And it gets its own Yaesu tab, like FlexRadio and Icom, rather than only being
available as a Main-view pane.
A console pane for the native Yaesu backend, in the same shape as the Icom and
Flex ones: S/PO/SWR meters, band and mode rows, AF/RF/squelch, AGC, the IPO/AMP1/
AMP2 front-end selector, ATT, NB, DNR + level, narrow filter, power in watts, mic
gain, VOX, split and ATU tune.
Three decisions worth keeping:
Panel reads are STAGGERED and live in their own file, away from ReadState. Meters
poll every cycle; settings only change when someone turns a knob, so they refresh
every 8th cycle and right after any set. Polling all of it every cycle would put
twenty queries a second on the serial link the frequency display shares.
Band buttons use the rig's own band memory (BS) rather than a frequency we pick,
so 20 m lands where the operator last was on 20 m — what the radio's own band
keys do.
A set is followed by a read-back, so the panel shows what the RIG ended up with,
not what we asked for; the two differ whenever a value is out of range or the
mode forbids the control. And a control the model lacks keeps its previous value
instead of dropping to zero, which reads as a setting that reset itself.
The S9 point of the S-meter scale is a hypothesis (the manual does not state it)
and is commented as such — one number to correct if reports come out an S unit
off, rather than a fudge spread through the RST helper.
Also removes the FlexRadio settings blurb, which explained the backend to
someone who had already chosen it.
A native CAT backend owns the rig's serial port, and Windows gives a COM port to
one process — so choosing native CAT locked WSJT-X, MSHV and JTDX out of the
radio entirely. That is the cost of dropping OmniRig, which was itself a sharing
layer, and it has to be paid back.
OpsLog now becomes the server, as wfview does. It speaks the Hamlib net rigctl
protocol, which every one of those programs supports natively (rig model "Hamlib
NET rigctl", 127.0.0.1:4532) with no driver to install. It sits in front of the
MANAGER, not a backend, so an operator on OmniRig, Flex, Icom or TCI gets the
same server.
Two details that decide whether a client works at all rather than degrading:
dump_state is parsed positionally and WSJT-X refuses to proceed without a
well-formed block, so it is written out in full and its shape is pinned by a
test; and set_vfo / set_split_vfo answer RPRT 0 rather than an error, because
OpsLog follows the rig's own VFO and a refusal makes WSJT-X abandon the
connection. Unknown commands answer RPRT -11 — never silence, which hangs a
client instead.
The whole protocol is tested against a fake rig, plus one end-to-end exchange
over a real socket, since the framing is as much the contract as the text.
Also: the Yaesu backend is confirmed working on a real FTDX10 (frequency, mode,
VFO, split), so its "not yet verified" note is now wrong and is corrected.
Every Yaesu fault reported so far came from OmniRig's interpretation layer, not
from the radio: a rig file that never exposes the VFO, a Freq property meaning A
on one model and B on another, a split flag that alternates between polls. This
talks to the rig directly, so what the radio answers is what is shown.
Modern Yaesu CAT is plain ASCII with a ';' terminator — FA/FB for the VFOs, MD0
for the mode, VS for the selected VFO, TX to key. Frequency is written to the VFO
the operator is actually on, not always to A, which is the failure that made a
display disagree with the radio.
Two things are genuinely uncertain across the family and are treated as such
rather than guessed. SPLIT is read through ST, then FT if the rig ignores ST —
whichever answers wins and the choice is remembered, because the two commands say
DIFFERENT things (a split flag vs which VFO transmits). If neither answers, split
is reported OFF and the fact is logged, rather than invented. Unknown model ids
and mode bytes are logged raw for the same reason.
Split resolution, frequency parsing and the mode mapping are pure functions with
a table test — the OmniRig equivalent is where every Yaesu bug lived, and it had
no test until late.
Written from the CAT reference; NOT yet verified on a radio.
rouggy