Yaesu FT3DR Digital Fusion Untethered Using ZUM Spot USB

A few weeks ago I bought the Yaesu FT3DR and the SC-39 Wires-X interface cable kit.  Wires-X makes it possible for me to talk to other Ham operators all around the world while I’m at my home where the path to nearby repeaters is obstructed by hills all around.  By itself, this has been a blessing to be able to talk to people outside Orange County, checking in on the current state of affairs as we all weather this COVID-19 pandemic.  I’ve also experimented with taking my home setup mobile in a previous article, “Fully Mobile Digital Ham

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Yaesu System Fusion with a Pi 2 Model B

While experimenting with the digital world, I thought I’d try to build a Pi-Star as a connection point for my Yaesu FT3DR.  There are plenty of tutorials online on how to do this, so I won’t get into that.  I’ll just say that yes it works and it only took about an hour from downloading the latest Pi-Star image, formatting the SD card and configuring the Pi-Star to get up and running. 

Compared to the Wires-X software, I definitely like the Pi-Star dashboard better since it keeps track of everything I hear and it’s linked up to QRZ.com for looking …

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