My Yaesu FT221R

As I mentioned, my Liner 2 started my interest in serious operation on the 2 metre band. The Liner 2 was of course SSB only. It did not take long for me to realise that this was my “calling” in amateur radio; it was what I wanted to do.

In 1978 I bought my Yaesu Musen FT221R. It was very expensive and cost over £400 if I remember correctly. I was fortunate in that I still lived with my parents at their home, and although I paid my keep, I did not have other overheads and therefore was able to afford it.

This new rig was a multimode with FM, CW and SSB. On the receive side the sensitivity was not great, but there was available a replacement “front end” available from muTek, a business owned by Chris Bartram G4DGU, which improved sensitivity and handling of adjacent strong signals. The FT221R had the advantage of simply slotting in a board, so the “mod” was very simple.

As sold the tuning dial was analogue only, but there was available an external digital frequency display YC221 which plugged into the back of the rig.

The new radio was very successful in working 144 MHz DX. After a while I graduated to running a 16 element Tonna and then 2 X 16 elements on my 40 feet tower. Those were the days! I had a very good VHF site in Billericay, so I had a lot of advantages, including by then a linear capable of 200 watts.

So, I worked a lot of DX. However I wanted to try meteor scatter, which was partly my incentive to pass the Morse test, which I did with the assistance of my Datong Morse tutor. Meteor scatter in those days was done by receiving 200 words a minute or 1000 letters per minute plus and slowing down to readable levels with a cassette tape recorder and suitable pot. Transmitting at this speed required an automatic keyer. Many of my friends built their own but I had a Datong keyboard keyer which did 1000 lpm just fine, and the FT221R managed to handle it well without any mods. A good system and I worked MS DX mostly down to Southern Europe, looking back at my old log now.

The old thing does work now but still needs some work. 10 watts on transmit, favourable report, receives OK on SSB and FM. It might do with a preamp, but weak beacons are audible.

Addendum: One thing I did not mention is that the rig just plugs into a mains power supply. So convenient! A separate PSU is not required though could be used with 13.8V DC if required.