FTX-1: Understanding ARS and Repeater Shift

We have spent a great deal of time investigating how repeater offsets work in the new Yaesu FTX-1 and have found it to be something of a complex topic. Complex enough that it seemed prudent to provide a writeup on the topic to help illuminate some things as you work on accurately programming your radio.

There are three methods to understand when it comes to thinking about repeater offsets:

• ARS - Automatic Repeater Shift
• Plus or Minus - manual offset direction
• Split Mode - use of the TX and RX frequencies without regard for offset frequency or direction.

All three will accomplish the same goal with two frequencies in use letting you access repeaters.

ARS - Automatic Repeater Shift

The first topic to understand is the “ARS” function in the FTX-1. This stands for “Automatic Repeater Shift.”

If you select ARS as your RPT Shift value (whether from the face of the radio or through the Offset Direction option of the programmer), you are telling the radio to use its internal hard coded list of Repeater Shift values.

The key term there is “hard coded.” These ARS values are set in stone at the Yaesu factory and CANNOT be changed with software. The values in your radio depend on the global region the radio was designed for. North American radios are loaded with the standard North American repeater offsets, European radios are loaded with the standard European repeater offsets, etc.

We will stress again that these values are determined and set by Yaesu themselves and simply cannot be changed with programming software.

Our ordinary solution to this kind of thing here at RT Systems would be to have the software adjust these ARS values “under the hood” for use entering memory channels after you read your radio into the program for the first time. Most radios will provide their country code as a standard part of their data output, and we can read that code to make an automatic adjustment.

The FTX-1 is the first and only radio we have encountered in over 30 years of operation that does not provide a country code in this way. As such we had to implement a manual workaround.

Completely unique to the FTX-1 programmer is a setting labeled “Country of Radio” found under Settings | Country of Radio in the menu of the program. This is used to select the global region that your radio is from and by extension the ARS repeater values that are loaded in it for use in the program. When selected, this window opens for you to identify your radio to the program. 

An important point of note here is that the “Country of Radio” setting is VISUAL ONLY within the software as a means of displaying data on screen that will match the radio’s performance after programming. Changing the selection in the software WILL NOT change your radio’s ARS values or TX/RX frequency capabilities.

Plus or Minus - manual offfset direction

The next key topic to understand is the nature of the radio’s “RPT Shift” settings located in the radio setting menu. There are four of them that correspond to the four bands that radio can be configured for repeater work on. These are 10 meters (28MHz), 6 meters (50MHz), 2 meters (144MHz), and 70 centimeters (430MHz). These options are found in the radio under “Radio Settings > Mode FM”, and in a similar location in the RT Systems programmer (Settings | Radio Menu Settings | Radio Setting | FM.

These values can be adjusted to your personal taste and will apply whenever you set a memory channel up with a specific positive or negative offset direction rather than relying on ARS. Understand that these apply GLOBALLY TO ALL memory channels within the given band. Whatever value you set here will determine what ALL memory channels you create will use when you manually select “Plus” or “Minus” as your offset direction.

Split Mode - use of Rx and Tx frequencies

The last point to understand is how the radio can be used in Split. It’s an HF radio at heart after all and it is perfectly capable of working in split mode.

Split mode is how you can work around the limitations of the global offset values mentioned above. If you have ten 2 meter repeaters and nine of them all use a standard 600kHz offset but one uses a non-standard offset of 1MHz, you could set just that one non-standard repeater up as a split to prevent changing the configuration of all the 2M repeaters in memory.

Your RT Systems programmer does this for you automatically. If you manually enter an offset value that is different than the menu items you have set up, the programmer will send that channel to the radio as a split. Do not let this surprise you. It is intended behavior and is the only way to accomplish the task within the context of the radio’s design and without disrupting other memeory channels.

In the example shown above channel 1 will be sent as ARS and will use the radio's hard coded ARS value depending on the radio's region of origin. Channel 2 will be sent to the radio as a split because it has a manual offset frequency of 1MHz which is different that the value in the "Radio Settings" menu which is 0.6MHz (600kHz). This will happen EVEN IF you have "Plus" or "Minus" selected as your offset direction.

If this information is sent to the radio and then immediately read back out, it will come back out showing "Split" where it currently says "Minus." in the original file. Again, the programmer is doing this on purpose as a means of achieving your desired configuration within the context of what the radio can accommodate.

In any of these configurations, the channels set to ARS, Plus, Minus or Split will still work perfectly fine to talk to a repeater.

As always, feel free to get in contact with us directly if you have any questions on this topic. The FTX-1 is quite an interesting radio with a lot of features and configuration potential that can make it daunting to approach. While we cannot claim to be in-depth experts on every facet of this complex machine we will be happy to work with you to the best of our ability to make sure you get your radio programmed to your satisfaction. 

09/10/2025