Playing around with the rather basic CAT software we purchased from Yaesu ( NOT impressive! Almost DOS friendliness ) I realized that I could just build a remote head. This will be for the pilothouse dashboard. During long hours of watch, I can use the radio and check into nets etc.

The "box" above is a small aluminum enclosure purchased from Digikey. It was cut out for a standard backlit optrex 16x2 character display, some knobs, and a bunch of butchered calculator buttons. It was hard finding a calc. with round buttons! I am too lazy to file out all those holes for square ones. This one was the last one at Wallyworld and was opened and broken, but I bought it anyway for the $2.97. I did try to get a deal because it was broken, but the guy at the checkout would have no part in it!

The knobs on the side are double pots I stole from a salvaged Cobra 200 10 meter radio. 

The top 2 are for fine tune and RF gain/squelch ( depending on the mode it's in - squelch for AM and FM, RF gain while in SSB/CW ) These knobs are actually going to be ADC'd into digital as the squelch is a function of "S" units reading from the CAT interface, and the Fine Tune (RIT) is just a frequency change that moves in small steps.

The bottom 2 knobs are for Mic gain and volume.

The lone knob on the face is actually an optical pulse switch, which clicks like a channel selector. This can be used to dial through bands/memories/VCO/menu functions. It also pushes in momentarily. Cool!

After a sweet paint job it's lookin' good. That's all it does for now, look cute, but as more is done inside it will be posted here. The PIC programming has been started and it could be converted to any radio really. The commands are pretty similar and are all RS-232 type voltages.