Super Control VS Ham Radio Deluxe

When I had my Icom 746Pro I used Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) to control it.

When I received this Yaesu I wanted to do the same thing so I ordered a converter cable to go from the Com port in the radio to a USB port in my computer. I completely forgot that both my WHS 2011 home made server  and my Dell Precision have the good ‘ol fashion Com ports built in, doh.   I could have saved myself some troubleshooting time had I just looked. So here is the supposedly proper cable, even says it was made for the Mark V, who knows, maybe now it would work! More on that later.

Using the default settings in HRD with the converter cable and the main VFO refused to function. It would always default to 10.291.756 and if you changed it would bounce right back. So, upon investigating and finding I have real Com ports I bought the serial cable designed for this radio, what could go wrong right?

I plugged it in, configured the Com port and started the software, no joy, same problem. So I investigated using different software. One program came up, Super Control, notice the radio in the middle of everything? A Yaesu FT-1000MP Mark V!! Things are looking up!

I installed the latest version, which is about 7 years old and it works great! Here I’m listening to 14.313 where a QSO is in progress. I used the second VFO to see the entire band in the bandscope. The HRD bandscope can go full screen and SS cannot, which is fine since there is so much control over either VFO and features.

I posted the problem in the HRD forums and one person gave all the help he could but we couldn’t figure out why HRD wasn’t working properly considering SS works perfectly. I noticed that in SS the CAT light is on all the time and in HRD it blinks which tells me the software polling the radio either works differently or this is a clue to the problem with HRD.

I opened a ticket with HRD stating if I can get it working I’ll buy the software however if we can’t get it working there is no reason to buy it. Their response, no help without buying the software, well, fine, I won’t buy the software then. SS seems to work better and was designed from the get go for this radio, HRD doesn’t want the sale, I’m ok with that. I do understand their view but they’re not the ones out the money if the software doesn’t function and there are no refunds.

So I stayed away from HRD for a week or so and continued using SS and starting like the functionality more and more even if the interface wasn’t the nicest to look at. Last night I decided to give HRD another try, I went into some advanced options and changed software polling and timings and wouldn’t you know it, it now works perfectly. It took a few tries to get it right but now the CAT light is on all the time and the reactions are very fast. It would have helped if Yaesu would have used a higher bandwidth Com port, 4800, really? Sheeesh, anyway it works!

Here is a picture, bad color bot shows everything.

Here is a better shot of it working.

Next week I’m going to reinstall the converter cable and see if that works, if so then I’m keeping it. You never know if you end up with another radio that needs the same kind of cable.