From KF4DHE

02 January 2000

Here is my experience with the FT-920 so far.

On 12/20/99 I placed my order for a new FT-920 with AES in Milwaukee,WI.On 12/21/99 I recieved the rig and upon opening it and getting it hooked up I found that the 13.5 volt jack on the rear panel had no voltage. Futher checking and I could not find any other problems after powering up other than this.Recieve was Perfect!This rig has one of the best recievers of any rig I have ever owned bar none!On the air testing was not so good.I got numerous complaints of distorted audio.I tried various means to get rid of the problem with no luck. I tried different mics and still no luck getting rid of the distortion problem.I finally found that the only way to clear it up was to turn down the mic gain low enough so that the rig made NO alc action at all!Then of course the rig would not hardly make any power out(It never made over 80 watts output).Another problem I found was in the DVR.This one was strange because at first it would work perfect and then the more you used it the worse it! would get.Very loud noise mixed in with the audio when playing back a recorded message from the mic.Various mic gain settings did not help the noise problem.Yet another problem was AM mode quit working.Worked fine for a couple of days and then just quit transmitting.Would give an "error" on the display when I tried to key up.And the last problem was very distorted audio when going thru the auto tuner.These are just the problems that I found with a Brand New rig in just a few days!I dont know what else would have showed up had I kept it any longer.On 12/28/99 I returned the rig to AES for "repair/replace" as they call it.I feel like I should be givin a new rig and not a repaired one since this one was only 8 days old.As of this message I have not yet heard from AES as to the status of this rig.Hopefully I will hear from them first of the week.I also sent a letter to Yaesu over this matter and let them know how I felt.I have had very good luck with Yaesu products in the past bu! t I am not at all happy with this purchase.I feel like we should be more protected when we make a new purchase and not be made to pay full price and then have to settle for a repaired item that left the factory defective.I will make another posting after all this is settled and let you all know how it turned out.I sure hope that AES and Yaesu dont let me down as I still want the 920,just one that works!

73's Don Knight KF4DHE

06 January 2000

Hello all,here is a follow-up to my 01/02/2000 posting.

Well the 920 arrived back from AES today and I am VERY happy to announce that it is PERFECT! Every single problem that this rig had is now gone.I can't say for how long but for now this rig is a dandy.I had a few of my friends that heard it before listen to it a while and they reported that it sounds like a different rig.Bueatiful audio with no distortion at all.There was a problem with the power output of some kind but I do not know the details on that.The fuse link inside the rig was not in the circut correctly and therefore was not letting any voltage get to the rear jack.They could not find anything wrong with the DVR but instructed me to try different mic gain settings when using it.They said it worked fine when they tried it there.The bad audio when going thru the tuner appears to be gone now as well.Must have been related to the power problem because now it is fine with the tuner.And last but not least, the problem with am not transmitting was my fault.Menu #70 was set to "off" and it has to be on for am to operate.And what happened was when I did a hard reset on the rig it put this menu item back to default which is "off".Right now I'm going to give praise to AES's service dept.They wasted no time at all getting my rig repaired and back to me.They recieved the rig on Friday the 31st and I had it back today which is Thursday the 6th.Now thats service!Now I can say that I have an excellent reciever AND transmitter!

73's to all, Don Knight kf4dhe