Helping my friend get on digital. He has a Yeasu FTDX-1200. After spending 3 hours on the phone we were able to setup the COM port and sound devices. However something peculiar is happening that I haven’t seen before. When we load either FIDigi or Wsjtx the radio immediately goes into transmit mode and starts transmitting a weak signal. If we call CQ on PSK for example that gets outputs to the antenna fine (confirmed with a shortwave) and then goes back to transmitting the weak signal. The program updates the frequency when the radio dial is turned, but not when it is changed from the computer.
If we are on FT-8 the same thing happens and if he try to change the band on the program it will change on the program for a second then revert back to the original frequency (no change on the radio side). One pecularity is that the digirig is interfacing with COM5 correctly, but COM3 has an error in it (the yellow triangle) relating to “This device cannot start (error code 10).” Attempts to fix COM3 have been unsuccessful.
If the radio keys up the moment you launch the software then the issue is related to the configuration of the serial port where RTS signal is used for the hardware flow control. That should be turned off and app should be configured to use RTS signal for PTT.
If the radio keys up when it should but then doesn’t return to receive or you get errors at the time of transmit then the issue is related to RFI from the radio disrupting Digirig’s serial or USB communication.
Both scenarios are covered in the troubleshooting guide at:
We turned handshake off and set PTT to RTS. That fixed the transmit issue and we are able to recieve signals. But now another problem has happened.
Any transmitted tones come out through the PC speakers as well as being transmitted to the radio. The digi rig microphone is set correctly and is confirmed using the “Listen” button under sound settings on Control Panel.
I asked him to test this with a shortwave and he didn’t hear any sound when the radio said it was transmitting.
Also he is able to recieve FT8 signals on 17, 12, and 10m via waterfall, but not on 80, 40, 20, or 15 (the waterfall is blue).
Any thoughts? We may be dealing with multiple issues.
without knowing the model radio i’ll hazard 2 guesses.
either the radio is remembering ‘mode’ for each band and is switching between mic/spk and external audio depending on band.
or
radio is losing pll lock on those bands.
i’ve had ic-736 radios with this problem several times.
(different band(s) but same problem)
also, uncheck ‘listen’. this is for eavesdropping on audio so when enabled, it’s like sending audio to two audio devices. good tool for troubleshooting but when things are ironed out, uncheck it.
We had the computer audio device set to the digi rig speakers, not the RealTech HD speakers. Setting the speakers to the computer speakers solved the issue. Man I hate the new Windows 11 layout.
So we have recieve working. He is able to read FT8 signals and decode CW of FlDigi. Now comes the issue of transmitting. We have yet to get a successful transmit and when he click the TUNE button on FlDigi, the radio transmits about 10 watts and then goes to 0. He is using a Yeasu FT1200DX
