Saturday, Jan. 29, 2011, 11:45 p.m. — In a recent new issue of QST I happened to see the new Yaesu FT-450D, a revised version of the FT-450 entry-level HF+6M rig.
The FT-450 isn’t a bad rig; mine has the autotuner. There were some things I just didn’t like about the rig; for starters, the display — I just never really liked the way it looked. Also the tuning knob was way too small and way too light. Another big problem with the original FT-450 (at least to me) was the color selected for the labeling — it was an orange-red color, difficult for my eyes to read except in good light. Most of the buttons are soft rubber-like plastic, and I can guess the wear patterns on common buttons would be evident with frequent use.
While I liked the rig overall, it had a lot of reasons that led me to operate my other rigs. The FT-450AT is in its box on top of a book shelf (I put an ad on QTH hoping to trade it for an FT-817ND).
The revised FT-450D fixes at least some of the problems I had with the rig: The buttons now are lit, the labeling on the front panel is white (or at least a whitish color with greater contrast than the old color). The tuning knob has been slightly redesigned to look more like the knob on the higher-end Yaesu transceivers. Yaesu says it added a 10 kHz roofing filter in the first IF to improve narrow-band selectivity.
The street price for the rig at HRO was $899.95 — a pretty hefty price in my book for an entry-level rig. For another $150 you can find a like new Icom IC-746PRO or Kenwood TS-2000, both of which have features way beyond the capabilities of the Yaesu.
I think the price point of the revised FT-450D puts it too close to the FT-950 — and truth be told, for a few hundred bucks more, you can get a hell of a lot more radio. I’ve never used the Icom IC-718, but it strikes me as a more user-friendly rig than the FT-450 series.
If it sounds like I’m dogging Yaseu rigs, I’m not. I love my FT-2000 and my plethora of VHF and dual band mobiles/handheld rigs. But the FT-450 just comes up short … not in functionality so much as its user interface and tactile feel — both very subjective opinions. You can’t please everyone.