New Addition: Yaesu FT-857D and why you don't need mechanical filters

- July 27, 2022

For the past six months I've been using a fairly old Yaesu FT-100D rig in my jeep to make QSOs and chase POTA from the local park up the street that has a lower noise floor than my home QTH.

Even though the FT-100D is a solid performer on HF and VHF/UHF, I wanted to upgrade the rig to enable better receive sensitivity, better controls and menu options. One thing I never liked on the FT-100 are the small, sticky buttons-one of the main drawbacks for me on this older rig.

Well, I got my wish, inadvertently, after trying to install a Yaesu XF-117CN CW 300Hz mechanical filter I bought off eBay for $135. These old radios require careful handling, and I had to remove 3 ribbon connectors, five coax cables, and lift out the receive PCB board to solder the mechanical filter in place.

Long story short, after a week troubleshooting, I got the radio up and running again on 2M, but the radio is no longer usable on HF: low speaker volume and no RF sensitivity making it essentially deaf on HF. I checked with the US based Yaesu Service Center in California and they no longer repair these radios because they don't have access to replacement parts. Same answer from several other HAM radio repair shops that I checked with across the country.

I disassembled the radio again myself, used a solder sucker to clean up any possible mistakes, fixed a few wires I had crimped, and reset the broken connectors on the ribbon cables as best as I could. After a week, still no dice on HF but VHF/UHF is fine. So now I have a nice 2M radio! Maybe I'll sell it for parts.

I found a good quality FT-857D for sale on QRZ for the right price from a ham down in San Antonio. Prices were much higher on eBay, and most of those rigs also needed to be shipped from Japan. My main concern with the one on QRZ was that it didn't have either of the optional SSB or CW filters. The FT-100D had both the SSB and 500Hz filter capabilities. My mistake was not leaving well enough!

I bought the used FT-857D on QRZ, and swapped out the old rig in the jeep, and was up and running in no time. I programmed a few local 2M repeaters, made some test calls, and found the menu system very intuitive and more accessible than the 100D, or even my newer FT-991a.

I made a few POTA QSOs on HF, both SSB and CW on 20M. Worked marvelously except that I couldn't figure out how to adjust the digital passband filter ( I heard multiple CW signals in my receive audio). I also worked an SKCC contact in NJ on 30M, and received compliments on both the my code (perfectly readable) and my fist (very easy to copy)!

I really love this radio and using the FT-100D for the past six months helps me appreciate the 857D even more. The DSP functions are very powerful. The digital filter adjustments are simple, by first pressing DSP, long pressing BPF, and rotating the dial to adjust the CW filter from a selectable range 240, 120, or 60 Hz.

Pretty simple and very effective, which will help me resist the urge to modify this radio mechanical filters in the future! I'm posting a link to a video I found on YouTube with a side by side comparison of both the mechanical filter and the DSP filters on the FT-857D.