XYL means wife (former young lady).
You should download the manual (it's PDF, but a lot of it should be 
readable) and start reading. Note pages that raise questions for you, such 
as "what button are they talking about and where is it on the front panel? 
Buttons and knobs are sometimes going to be indicated by icons, or some 
extended graphics characters, and you may also want to change from the 
normal reading order to the left-to-right, top-to-bottom reading order that 
Adobe reader offers. If you have access to Omnipage or one of the blindness 
OCR programs, you may want to process the PDF manual through that, also. 
Become as familiar with the manual as you can before the local ham comes, so 
you can ask lots of questions.
Before I bought my FT950, which has more than 60 buttons and 10 rotary 
knobs, my brother and I looked at it for an hour in a Ham Radio Outlet 
store. I had already been reading the manual off and on for a couple of 
months. We took a systematic tour of the front panel, while I recorded my 
conversation with Paul on a digital audio recorder. I was able to take the 
recording home, and after the rig arrived, consult the recording to figure 
out what was where and correlate that information with the manual. I've been 
a ham for almost 60 years, so I knew what I was getting into, and am happy 
with the choices I made.
I assume you are going to start with SSB operation. So you need to find out 
how to get a frequency reading, how many kHz you go up and down the band for 
each dial revolution of the VFO A knob, what the various bands sound like 
and how you can select them, how to find WWV, CHU and other out-of-band 
stations that can be useful. You'll need to know how to initiate an 
automatic tuneup, and what are the indications if the automatic built-in 
tuner fails to match your antenna on the frequency you are attempting to 
use.
This may be a lot of information, but if you have passed your General exam 
you should be ready to work with this and have a lot of fun contacts. At the 
moment, 75, 40 and 20 meters are the most likely places for you to have 
phone QSOs. Don't try to do everything at once, but do take lots of notes as 
you learn. I hope to work you sometime, most likely on 40 meters.
73,


Lloyd Rasmussen, W3IUU, Kensington, MD
http://lras.home.sprynet.com
-----Original Message----- 
From: jeff busch
Sent: Monday, September 07, 2015 2:07 PM
To: Lloyd Rasmussen
Subject: Re: accessable programming software for the Yaesu

Hi Lloyd.  Well, I'm basically starting from ground zero, setting up the 
built-in speech chip to programming frequencies etc. Everything's 
menu-driven.  I have a guy who's supposed to start working with me on it 
sometime toward the end of this week.
Unfortuantely, he's sighted but has one of these rigs.  But I want to be 
able to do as much as possible on my own and know what I'm doing.
That's why I was trying to find an accessible program that would allow me as 
much independent operation as possible.
Thanks.

73
Jeff
KC9UIE

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 7, 2015, at 10:35 AM, Lloyd Rasmussen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> The person who can tell you most about the FT450 is Mike, VO1AX. I use an
> Ft950, which has a lot more menus and options than the 450. I have mostly
> set things up and then left them alone. But I made up a chart of all the
> menu numbers and what they control, and read enough instructions to find 
> out
> that pressing a particular button sets the selected item to a default 
> value
> which is also in the chart. If the 450 doesn't have a keypad for entering
> frequencies, I would see why you might want software for programming the
> rig. In the past I found that Ham Radio Deluxe was somewhat accessible, 
> but
> it didn't program everything, and relied on the mouse pointer of 
> Window-Eyes
> quite a bit. I think that Mike was also using HRD. Maybe I can help a 
> little
> more if I know what you are trying to accomplish.
> 73,
>
>
> Lloyd Rasmussen, W3IUU, Kensington, MD
> http://lras.home.sprynet.com
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: jeff
> Sent: Saturday, September 05, 2015 11:05 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: accessable programming software for the Yaesu
>
> Have a ft450-A.T. and am wondering if there are any accessible software
> programs which can be used to program and operate this radio.
> Thanks
> 73
> Jeff
> KC9UIE