2011-04-25

Using Severe Weather WX Alert on Yaesu Handhelds

I have a Yaesu VX-7R and VX-2, both of which are great handheld radios. Deep in the menu system, each one has a "WX Alert" option. It's item 20 in the VX-7R's menu, and the VX-2's menu items are in alphabetical order, so look for "WX ALT" there. After enabling this option, my radios still failed to alert me when the National Weather Service issued alerts via their NOAA Weather Radio system.  What gives? The manuals that came with my radios are very vague about how to use this feature, and Googling around, it seems like a lot of people have the same problem.

The trick is that you have to be scanning!

On the VX-7R, you have to be scanning the weather band for this to work. If you scan the weather band with WX Alert enabled, it will silently pause on any NOAA Weather Radio stations it finds, listening for the alert tone without breaking squelch. If it finds one, it will stop, open the squelch and play the weather alert. I recommend using the SUB band for this. Here's how you do it.

* Press [F] then [0] to enter the menu, and scroll to item 20. Enable WX Alert by pressing the [MAIN] or [SUB] buttons, then momentarily press PTT to exit the menu.
* If you have only the MAIN tuner up, press and hold the [MAIN] or [SUB] button to see the dual tuners. Momentarily press [SUB] to select the SUB tuner.
* Press [F] then [3] to move the SUB tuner to the WX band.
* Press [F] then [1] to start scanning the WX band for weather alerts.
* Press [MAIN] to start controlling the MAIN tuner, and use the radio as normal.

On the VX-2:
* Press and hold the H/L button to enter the menu, scroll to "WX ALT"
* Press H/L momentarily, then use the VFO knob to enable it.
* Press PTT Momentarily to save the setting.
* Press [F] followed by the [WIRES] button in the bottom left corner to enter special memory mode
* If needed, press [BAND] repeatedly until the weather band shows up.
* Press and hold the [BAND] key to scan the weather band.

The VX-2 will silently pause on any NOAA Weather Radio stations it finds, listening for the alert tone without breaking squelch. If it finds one, it will stop, open the squelch and play the weather alert. I also found that if this option is enabled on the VX-2 and you're scanning other memory frequencies, the radio will occasionally jump over to the weather band and listen for the alert tone. You should probably have the WX band tuned to the frequency of the nearest weather radio transmitter, because I don't think it scans the whole weather band, only the station that was last used in the WX Special memory mode.

Of course, not all Yaesu radios have these features, and these steps may not work exactly the same for all Yaesu radios that support WX Alert.



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