[GCARC] FTDX3000

[Ken Bozarth]

I tried sending this to all but it did not get to all.

For those of you who own or are thinking of buying a Yaesu FTDX3000, read
this...The rig has thermal issues. At low duty cycle and at about 50% max
power, it's OK, on my particular rig. But if you talk for a while at full
power, when you unkey you will not be able to key next time. Powering off
and on the rig is the only way to fix it. Sometimes, pressing the Tune
button will reset it. I can imagine one getting messed up in a digital mode.
I do not know if Yaesu incorporated thermal sensing that will shut down TX.
It takes a while for the fan to come on, so they are sensing temp somewhere
for the fan. Some peeps on the Yaesu groups have seen this, not just me.
Yaesu tried to be innovative by eliminating the power amp heat sink. The
entire chassis is thick cast aluminum, but that does not get the heat out of
the finals efficiently enough. To make matters worse, the tiny cooling fan
has a very small, and restrictive air inlet area, which is on the rear panel
where the hot exit air is hanging around, waiting to be sucked back in. My
fix was to remove the speaker and go with an external one. I do that anyway.
This leaves a nice air inlet next to the fan area. Now I can run full tilt
without this goofy problem. There is one variable that may affect the
severity of this problem, and that is antenna match. My rig did it into a
dummy load. Other than that, I have no gripes with the rig. BTW, the free
Yaesu control pgm does not store the menu settings to a file. The pgm
Win4Yaesu does this and more, and is well worth the $60. They have the same
pgm for the new Icoms, too. Enjoy your new rigs. Life is good!