YAESU
FT897 by
Paul VK3TGX, Gateway July/August 2004
Recently, with
my plans to buy a caravan, and go camping etc, thoughts turned to
what radio equipment I should install in my new 'toy'
After much tooing and throwing between the Yaesu FT897 and the Icom
706 mk3G, I decided to go for the Yaesu rig. In Yaesu's line up
of portable multi-band sets there is the FT817, FT857, and this,
the FT897. I was originally interested in the little FT817 rig as
you could carry it on your side and go foot portable with it, however
when I was finally allowed onto the HF bands, I tried to work a
bloke running one of these up in Queensland, and the 10W output
just didn't cut it. As I was not impressed by the styling of the
FT857 (also 100W on HF) I skipped it and went for the '897, which
I bought from G&C comms in Cranbourne, along with the optional
DTMF mike.
The FT897 covers
from the 160m HF band, up to 70cm UHF, all modes. On receive it
covers a lot more ground, from long wave to above the 70cm band,
including the commercial broadcast bands on AM & FM. On almost
all frequencies the radio will operate in all modes, with the exception
of the broadcast FM band where the set is locked to wideband FM,
a mode not available anywhere else.
On transmit you get 100W on HF, on up to the 6M band, then 50W on
2M, & 20W on 70cm. Of course the radio will not allow you to
transmit out of band, it also knows to limit transmit modes in some
places.
If your antenna is not quite rite and you present the radio with
a bad mismatch then the output power is automatically turned down
to save the output devices, although it is probably not a good idea
to rely on this feature.
Due to the FT897 being a smallish transportable rig, front panel
room is at a premium, and most controls have double functions, this
even includes the power switch, which doubles as a tuning speed
selector. As such, all functions that missed out on a dedicated
control are either selectable via a menu system, or can be allocated
to one of three 'soft' buttons under the main display.
Here you can see the radio is in "-" negative repeater
offset, "TEN" Tone enabled, 13.7V power, "M-002"
memory 2, "FM" mode. Memory channels can optionally be
given alpha names (that can be toggled to frequency display instead)
.
Then follows the bar graph display that is a receive "S"
meter here. On transmit it can display TX power, modulation, or
SWR.. Under this is usually 3 labels for the 3 buttons immediately
under the display, Button "B" in this case is unassigned.
If you don't like the display colour, this can also be changed,
or you can allocate the colour changes to a rig function, ie different
colours for each band etc.
On the back of the rig are two antenna connections, a SO239 for
HF through to 6M, and an N connector for 2 and 70. I though this
was a good idea as it makes getting your antenna leads mixed up
a lot harder - not to mention SO239 connectors being somewhat inefficient
on 70cm. There is also a connection for running packet radio and
other digital modes without having to hack into the microphone connection
on the front of the radio. I will have to make up some leads and
try it out on slow scan TV. On the back you there is also a 'CAT'
connector, which is Yaesu talk for a computer connection allowing
a PC to take control, however this connector is lost if you want
to use either the optional antenna tuner, or linear amp. though
if you are desperate for this function, it can also be done via
the front panel mic socket. The mic socket by the way, is one of
those newfangled RJ45 computer LAN type sockets.
On the bottom of the set is a large compartment that can either
house an optional 240V power supply, or 2 rechargeable batteries,
however when you run the radio from the internal battery you are
limited to 20W TX power.
On air I received good comments about my audio, the only thing that
caused trouble was my long wire antenna that was too much for my
old Kenwood tuner to completely tune in on 3.620MHz, and as such
the radio started to throttle back the TX power making quite a mess
of my side band transmissions to Graeme VK3XTA on his recent trip
to Swan Hill - also equipped with a Yaesu FT897.
I found I had to limit the radio to 30W TX power, then troubles
mostly went away.
Please
make any suggestions or comments on any of this by email:-