It’s been a long time since I posted here on the blog. After hammering my head with a Yaesu FTH-2009 for weeks I was able to get it programmed. In this post I will tell you how to program a Yaesu FTH-2009 using DosBox and a USB cable.

After asking in various forums and Facebook groups about Yaesu FTH-2009 programming information, almost everywhere told me the same thing. Yaesu’s FTH-2009s cannot be programmed on modern computers, let alone using modern USB programming interfaces.

If you have been reading the blog for a long time, you know that I have a good variety and quantity of programming cables for different radio manufacturers.

Yaesu’s case is no different and I have both modern USB programming cables, as well as programming cables a few decades older based on RS232 serial ports.

Following the recommendations given to me in different places, I completely put aside my USB programming cables and focused on trying to program some FTH-2009 with a serial cable and a computer running FreeDos and with RS232 serial ports.

After a few weeks of no positive results with this setup I decided to put all advice aside. I started using the experience I had had programming radios from DOSBOX, like the Vertex FTL-2011, and after a few hours I had good results.

What is needed to program a Yaesu FTH-2009 radio:

• A programming cable
• Programming software

How to program Yaesu FTH-2009 – Programming cable

Unlike many other radios I have been working with, there is not much information available on the programming interface available on the internet.

I also didn’t try to buy one as most of the ones sold on Amazon or Aliexpress are USB and supposedly wouldn’t work with this radio.

I worked with a Yaesu programming cable whose tips can be changed according to the type of radio that one needs to program.

With this cable I programmed Vertex FTL-2011 radios which are contemporary to the Yaesu FTH-2009. This is why I directly tried to program with this cable but without success.

Going back to the recommendations I got on the forums, one person commented that the programmer schematic was the same for the FTL-2011 as it was for the FTH-2009. Supposedly, at that time, Yaesu (Vertex) maintained the same programming cable pinout for all radio models.

From there, I took a Vertex FTL-2011 USB programming interface for radios and, with a female RJ45 connector and a 2.5mm mono plug, I made my own programming cable with which I did succeed.

The above is a diagram of a supposed Yaesu radio programmer from that era. In it you can the pinout that could be used in this radio.

I took my USB programming cable that ends with a male RJ45, and connected the female RJ45 from which two wires come out.

One of the wires goes from pin 1 of the RJ45 to the tip of the 2.5mm mono plug. The other wire goes from pin 4 to the ground of the mono plug.

The following image shows how using the female RJ45 connector and the mono plug I was able to build an adapter and program my FTH-2009.

How to program Yaesu FTH-2009 – Programming software

The Yaesu FTH-2009 programming software is CE2. This is software that has been thought for many years to run from DOS operating systems.

Today it is very difficult to buy the software but it is so old that it is available on many websites on the internet. Just a little searching is enough to find it.

If you don’t have a DOS operating system to install, you can also find some DOS images for virtualbox, you can use FreeDos. The other alternative, which is the one I used, is to run the Yaesu FTH-2009 programming software from DOSBox.

DOSBox is a DOS emulator with some modern features that allow software created for DOS operating systems to run on modern computers.

Many people say that DOSBox does not allow you to run any software intended for DOS on it. In my experience this is so but it is in the least of cases.

To program the Yaesu FTH-2009 I was able to do it without problems running CE2 from the emulator.

DOSBox can be downloaded from this link.

How to program Yaesu FTH-2009

Having explained the above, now if we go with the programming step by step of the Yaesu FTH-2009.

The first thing we have to do is connect the USB programming cable and take note of the COM port assigned in the operating system.

After this, we open DOSBox and map the COM port of the USB cable with COM1 inside DOSBox. For this we execute the following command:

Then we launch the programming software and once inside we press F8 to choose the radio model that we are going to program.

Once the radio model is selected, we have to read the configuration of our rig.

It is always a good practice to read the configuration of our radio before writing to it. This is due to the fact that many programming software can define its settings beyond the configuration of the channels.

To read the radio, press F5

Once the radio is read, you should see the channel configuration on the screen. Modify as needed before writing the radio.

Once the channel configuration is done, is time to write the new configuration to the radio. To do so, press F6 and follow the instructions.

Once the programming is done, you can press F8 to exit and then yes or no depending if you want to save the configuration or not.

I hope this post has helped you learn a little abouthow to program Yaesu FTH-2009. If you have any questions you can leave a comment or post in the Yaesu radio user forum.