Yaesu FTdx5000D reviews

This rig is an example of what the manufacturers give us to satisfy our obsession with Rob Sherwood's receiver rankings. No doubt about it, the primary receiver is outstanding. But, the transceivers fails to deliver in many important areas. The QST review noted a CW keying anomaly and stated it was corrected by Yaesu in the second batch of the rig. I had a unit from the 5th batch and found it not only had the problem noted in the review, but many other CW problems as well. The keyed waveform in non-QSK mode showed key clicks due to overshoot on the leading edge. In QSK mode, ALL the dits were shortened, making for an almost unreadable signal. Yaesu supposedly would fix the problem under warranty, but the customer had to pay shipping both ways to get the fix installed for free. The FTDX-5000 is an exceptionally heavy unit and shipping charges to the west coast center were steep. One fellow who had the fix applied by Yaesu then reported that he really couldn't operate QSK above 20 WPM as nothing could be heard between characters in the receiver.

The scope in the SM-5000 monitor is terrible, even worse than that in the Orion II and vastly inferior to the scope in any of the Icom rigs going back many years. It's very dim and what's displayed doesn't have much relationship to what's heard. You can forget about being able to visually detect weak signals on the scope.

There are MANY rigs out there for much less money that are far superior to the FTDX-5000. This rig was a big disappointment.