FT-710 Radio and SD Card
I have been using my FT-710 radio for the past seven months or so, but I have never ventured into using an SD Card to store data. Manual of the radio says that a commercially available SD memory card can be used to save transceiver settings, memory contents, screen capture and to update the firmware. But SD card does not come with the radio and you have to source it elsewhere. They also warn us that all SD cards sold commercially are not guaranteed to work with this radio! That was one reason why I was hesitant to try one. The video clip shows the SD card slot on the left side of the radio, just away from the power switch, which is of course on the front.
The SD can be used to record your own voice and replay it. There are five voice memories for it. It will be useful to store and replay often repeated messages, which can be transmitted as well. You can also select the mode like LSB, USB, AM, FM etc while recording and transmitting the recorded messages. Another option available is to record the received audio into the SD memory card. Maximum recording time for one file is about 16 hours, with maximum file size limit of approximately 3.5 GB and recording stops automatically when the maximum file size limit is exceeded. I will probably never that reach that limit at all as I never keep my radio on continuously for a long time. Audio files other than that recorded by this unit cannot be played. So I cannot use it as a music player!
It has been mentioned that the radio has to be switched off before inserting or removing the SD card. The SD card has to be formatted within the radio while using it for the first time. SD cards formatted in other devices will have to be re-formatted in the radio, if at all such ones are being used. On reading some online forums, I came to know that some radios may take a while for detecting the card and starting up for the first time. During that time it may appear that the display of the radio has frozen! Time needed will increase as more data is written on to the SD card. It is nice to know that we have to be patient while using the SD card or else we may panick thinking that the radio has been damaged! Of course, any malware in the SD card could cause damage, which we have to avoid by getting it from a reputed source as in case of any other device.
Bitmap images of screen shots will be stored as 800 x 400 pixel size images and can be displayed on a personal computer or similar viewer. It will be date and time stamped. There is option to correct the date and time format in the radio if it is found to be wrong. It has been mentioned that Yaesu has tested with 2GB SD card and 4GB, 8GB and 32GB SDHC cards, most can be used in this radio. You may be aware that SD stands for Secure Digital and SDHC for Secure Digital High Capacity. It will be nice if I can store CQ calls both in SSB and CW formats so that I can easily re-transmit it, thereby taking a lot of strain over CQ calls.