Welcome to this Quick Demo on connecting to a Wires-X Room using a Yaesu FT5D
First a couple of assumptions.
We will be using the Madison Area Repeater Association Fusion Repeater for this operation in Madison WIsconsin. This repeater has internet Wires-X connectivity on the digital side of the fusion repeater and this radio is set up to connect to this repeater on 147.150 with a “normal” split of .6 Mhz.
Your setup may be different but if you are able to communicate through the repeater in your area and it has internet connectivity and the wires-x is working on the digital side (rather than the analog FM side) of the fusion repeater this should work for you.
I will show two different connections.
First, since it is so active and usually will give you instant gratification I will be connecting to Americas Link at AMERICA-KC-WIDE which was the most active room when I did this demo. If you want to connect to an active room you can open your internet browser and go to https://www.yaesu.com/jp/en/wires-x/id/active_room.php and then click on “Act” in the columns at the top until it sorts by highest to lowest. Usually ALLJA-CQ-ROOM-D (Japan) or AMERICA-KC-WIDE (US) are the most active depending on the time of the day. This list gives you both the name and the ID of all the active Wires-X rooms and is very helpful in finding a room to connect to.
Turn the radio on and make sure you are connected to the repeater in whatever mode you usually use. As usual listen for while to be sure you aren’t interrupting an ongoing QSO. You don’t have to specify DN or FM, it will automatically select the correct mode.
Once you have determined that the frequency is clear, you start by pressing and holding down the GM/X button for a second or two.
The radio will beep and the X in the upper right corner will blink while the radio is negotiating with the repeater.
Soon the blinking will stop and the radio will show that it is connected to the repeater’s wires-x functionality. Remember, I am using the Madision Area Repeater Association’s Fusion repeater. Yours may differ.
The next step is to find the room to which you’d like to connect.
Press “SEARCH & DIRECT”
his will take you to the “WIRES CATEGORY” screen. We are not discussing this screen here, perhaps in another demo which we will link when available.
For now press “SEARCH & DIRECT” again.
We will spell out the name of a node here. You can also connect using the ID number of the node which I explain here: Connecting to Yaesu Wires-x room By Node ID using Yaesu FT5D
This will take you to the keyboard. Here you will enter the beginning of the name of the room you want to join. You can also directly enter the room number. We will describe that below.
I am going to AMERICA-KC-WIDE so I start to type in the name.
- Press “a”
Let’s continue
- Press “m”
- Press “e” – wait it came up “D” – press the “def” box again and it will show “E”
- Press the “pqrs” box 3 times for “R”
- Press the “ghi” box 3 time for “I”
- Press the “abc” box 3 times for “C”
- Now hold on a moment. If you just press the “abc” box again for “A” it will just keep cycling through a-b-c-a-b-c-a-b-c in the box you just filled.
- Press the right arrow under the “ENT” key to move the cursor to the next space and press the “abc” box 3 times.
- That’s enough. Now Press the “ENT” box to start the search.
Now you will receive a list of rooms that start with AMERICA.
You will notice that AMERICA-KC-WIDE has “131” after it (your number of connections may differ). That is the number of active connections. Press “AMERICA-KC-WIDE”
If the node is active you should hear conversation now. You will be connected to a node’s news function. We will not be covering this functionality here, but it is an interesting function!
Pressing the BACK button on the keyboard will return you to the main screen while connected to the node you have chosen.
Disconnecting
The releater does have a time out set so eventually it will disconnect you from the node. If you want to continue to listen you can reconnect. Otherwise when you are done you can disconnect from the node with a long press on the BACK button on the keyboard
