Seems absolutely crazy to me to advertise a feature which you can not help your customers to use. The DUO-ART manual shows an over-simplified diagram of how to connect an FT-817 to your amp, but there is no information on how that connection is made. When I asked Advanced Operators for help, I typically got the response "It's not rocket science" and "It looks pretty straightforward", but no one actually came out with anything useful.
I approached ELAD's Technical Support and despite me explaining that I am a Foundation Licence holder with ZERO KNOWLEDGE of electronics, I received techno-talk and unfathomable schematics. They could not provide a pre-made cable and could not just tell me in plain English which parts to buy and which wires go to which pins. In fact, they sent me conflicting information on a number of occasions. Here's some of the stuff they sent to me which really did not help...
I turned to the ELAD FORUMS and initially got the familiar responses which make you feel a bit dumb and spoke of 'holding the soldering iron the right way around'. I explained that I wasn't dumb - and I was perfectly capable of putting together a cable if someone could just tell me what connects to what.
After a couple of days, I was again receiving conflicting advice (albeit in a much more friendly manner). So I decided to read through the information, pick the bones out of it and just 'have a go'!
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So for the benefit of other DUO-ART/FT-817/818 owners, here's what I did....
You also need to buy a a Yaesu CT-62 Lead. At one end it has an 8-PIN DIN for the 817's ACC Socket and at the other end it has a DB9 Connector for the DUO-ART. You NEED the DB9 Connector, but the lead is useless in this project because it only contains 4 wires, so open up the DB-9 connector, take a nice clear photo of the wiring for reference and then de-solder the connections and throw the rest of the cable in a storage drawer.
JUST A QUICK NOTE : Don't think that you can use any old DB-9 connector! The CT-62's DB-9 connector includes a PCB which provides some sort of "Line Level".
Order a shielded 8-PIN MINI DIN to Bare Wire Lead from the internet. The best place to buy one in the UK is TechnoFix...
Using a Multi-Meter, determine which colours go to which pins and make a note. Your cable may have the same colour combination as mine, in which case you can follow the diagram above. Otherwise, just make sure that the 4 connections on the DB9 match up with the appropriate pins in the mini-din.
After soldering the 4 relevant wires to the DB-9, you will have four surplus wires in the cable. Find out which one of them goes to Pin-8 of the mini-din - you are going to connect that wire to the TIP of the Jack-Plug and cut off the 3 surplus wires.
When connecting the Jack-Plug Tip wire to the Pin-8 wire, it's best to keep both wires small. Lay the cables next to each other as show in the drawing below, cable-tie them together and connect the two wires together with a soldered joint. Insulate and then rebuild the DB-9 connector. You may want to add another cable-tie slightly lower down the cables for additional strengthening.
Your cable should now look like this.....
I'm just pleased that I managed to come up with a working solution when ELAD couldn't be bothered to. I'll probably use the FT-818 and DUO together once every blue moon, so I guess people will wonder why I was so determined to find an interface? Just because! The facility existed on the Amp and it drove me potty that no one seemed to know how to make a cable! If ELAD had just produced a simple guide like this one, everything would have been sooooo simple.
And even though he's a YorkshireMan, my thanks still go to Neil Smith G4DBN for his encouragement and assistance.
Elad duo-art interface cable for yaesu ft-817 ft-818
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