I am running a FTM-400 in my truck, I regularly use APRS on the B-Band. I’m interested in a digirig that will do CAT control as well as act as the TNC for VARA-FM, or Fldigi. I am also running a digirig on my Kenwood TS-480HX. First off… (and correct me if I am wrong) my understanding is that I cannnot simply swap the cable on my ts480’s digi rig because the FTM400 requires the Digirig to be logic level, so I would need an additional Digirig dedicated to the FTM400.
My main question… In order to have the CAT control function, my understanding is the radio must be set for 9600 baud. does this break my 1200 baud APRS transmit/receive abilities?
FTM-400 supports some serial connectivity and it happens to be the same RS-232 electric standard as your Kenwood so you can share the same Digirig.
Looking at the manual for FTM-400 I’m not finding any specific references to CAT control.
As far as the baud rate of the audio, there is no relation with serial functions except that the Digirig cable for FTM-400 that has serial lines happens to be wired for 9600 baud audio. This shouldn’t cause any issues because any modes that work with standard 1200 baud audio will also work with 9600 baud audio.
FANTASTIC! Thanks for the super fast response. getting to the radio involves taking my back seat out so I wanted to be sure if I was going to do this… that I only have to do it once!
just remember, the digirig is not a TNC.
if you’re already running vara-hf/fm/sat somwhere else, then you understand the requirement.
also, the serial data on the yaesu aprs enabled radios, is one way traffic from the internal TNC.
you can read the data, but not send any data to it.
this is separate from ‘remote control’/CAT commands of course.
good luck
kb0wlf
