CHIRP

I just received my HYS TC-8900R and straight out of the box I attempted to program it with Chirp using the Yaesu FT-8900 profile. At first I was getting the checksum error "Checksum Failed [0000-39C7 (@39C8)]" when trying to receive memories from the radio which another person also reported. I could write to the radio and everything was written successfully. After performing a full reset on the radio (even though the radio is brand new), I was able to get it to finish reading from the radio without an error but the memories it pulled appeared blank. This made sense because I just performed a full reset on the radio.

I discovered though, after writing memories to the radio and performing another download from the radio, the memories still appeared blank. Upon closer inspection of the memories by looking at individual RAW memories, I could see that frequencies were in fact getting pulled into chirp but not displaying in the list of memories. If I set up any HOME frequencies, I would get the checksum error at the very end of the clone/download from radio procedure. After a full reset, I could read from the radio again though.

Other things to note:
After downloading from the radio, it is not possible to update memory '0' in Chirp. Can only view and modify 1-799, however this may be intentional as I later discovered the Yaesu FT-8900R owners manual says there are 799 memories not counting the hyper memories, etc.

I don't think it would take much to make Chirp work fully on the HYS TC-8900R and I really think if support was added, more people would buy these radios as an alternative to the more expensive and popular Yaesu FT-8900R. I am sure people are just skeptical of this radio, as I was, due to the lack of information and lack of programming support. This radio is pretty much the exact same radio. The buttons are only subtly different and the antenna connector is a Type N vs an SO-239. As for operation, the menus and functions are all the exact same. I was using the Yaesu manual to get around on the radio and everything was exactly the same. I discovered that there is a sequence of button presses to get into a hidden alignment menu used by the factory on the Yaesu FT-8900R so I gave it a try on the HYS TC-8900R and it works the exact same as well. Using the FT-8900R profile as a template, with little modification, the HYS TC-8900R could probably be added to Chirp as well.

Hopefully this information helps others attempting to program an HYS TC-8900R or helps get this awesome radio added to the list of supported radios.

If there is any way I can help to get this radio supported, please let me know. Please try to add this radio! Thank you!