While I’m rambling on about ham radios, I suppose I ought to mention a feature of the Yaesu radios that I was curious about called ARTS, which stands for Automatic Range Transponder System.

This feature is found on a number of their handhelds as well as several of their mobile/base units.  You set both radios to the same simplex frequency and DCS code, then activate the ARTS feature.  The radios will transmit for about 1 second every 25 seconds and will listen the rest of the time for a signal with the same DCS code.  When a signal with the right DCS code is received, the radio announces that it’s “in range” (with a beep and text on the display).  After one minute with no received signal, the radio will announce that it’s “out of range.”  Radios with ARTS also have a feature that will store your callsign and send it every 10 minutes via CW (“DE [your callsign] K”) to satisfy FCC identification requirements.

Just out of curiosity I tried it between the FT-60R and the VX-7R, but I didn’t really see much utility for the feature.  First, everyone using it would be required to have a Yaesu radio.  Second, it seems like an awful lot of transmission activity, which might wear down your battery.  It’s also a one-to-one relationship, so a base unit operator would have no way of handling multiple HT’s in the field (which is one of the few uses I could see for the feature, as it would allow the base operator to use his more powerful radio to call the HT with a message to move in closer to maintain communications).

I did several different searches on Google using combinations of “Yaesu” and “ARTS” (i.e. “A.R.T.S.” and spelling out the words) to see if anyone was using it or had an opinion, but the only hits I got were either from Yaesu marketing materials (including listings with several online stores) or from radio reviews.  No one that I could find seems to be using it (or if they are, they aren’t saying anything about it online).