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When I was studying for the Advanced license (resulting in upgrading to the full UK call sign MJ0RZD), my dear friend Reg GJ3XZE wrote to me asking me to advertise a couple of his radios for sale in the JARS newsletter one of which was a 200 watt Yaesu FT1000MP Mk.V with its power supply, all in excellent condition, for a not to be missed price. First dibs!!! J's first comment to me was, "why are you even hesitating, you know you want it!"
So one Saturday morning off I went to see Reg, the requisite cash changed hands and I came away with my new 'pride and joy' which you can see here. This made it all the more important to get through the advanced license and 5 months later, 'Bingo', on air with full power when needed!
The FT1000MP Mk.V is a truly magnificent piece of equipment, I had always wanted an FT-102 but this kind of puts it in the shade! We are talking true contest quality radio equipment and whilst not a current model is still acknowledged as being one of the greats. Bristol Contest Group still use the preceding FT1000MP so it can't be too bad! This particular model being the Mark V includes a number of improvements (five offically) that I won't get bogged down in here but suffice to say it is rated at 200W PEP across the HF bands with a contest grade receiver with standard filtering which works really well (also having the scope for additional plug in CW and SSB filtering. One of the great standard features is the operation of the dual VFO which when listening through stereo standard headphones (such as the Heil HC range) actually gives a different 'sound' depending on which VFO you are listening to, monitoring both VFO's at the same time using split frequency is initially weird but intuitive and quite good to use. The level of control over the rigs functions is amazing, the main features all being accessible from the front panel, a variety of further features accessed through menus (as with most modern rigs the menus take some tinkering to get the best and it is necessary to 'RTFM'!!! Amongst the best features I have found on the radio are the electronically controlled shift and width controls and the notch filter all of which work superbly and really can make the difference between pulling out that weak signal or not on a noisy or crowded band. This works really well with the Heil HC4 headset but also, soon after the acquisition, I was able to secure an excellent Yaesu MD-100 microphone which is the native and as such well suited unit for the radio. I had the chance of an MD-200 more recently which would be even better and even though it was an attractive price it seemed at the time a bit of a step too far; maybe another time!
Under construction - more to follow!
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