In a Yaesu Frenzy!

[CalebATC]

Haha, I know. Hopefully that won't go too fast

 

[nanZor]

I had a chance to try both the 857 and the 897. I'm on the fence myself, and it took a bit to get comfortable with the menus.

Out of the box, the rigs were set for high-fidelity audio response. Changed a few right off the bat. Obviously, this is according to my taste:

Menu

For general cw/ssb ops:
046 -HPF cutoff. Set it near 3000 hz
047 - LPF cutoff. Set it near 300 hz.
(Make sure that "DBF" is toggled on beforehand, otherwise you won't hear any change.)

I prefer a little bit of receive offset too:

015 LSB R +100
017 USB R -100

One big help to alleviate navigating the menus, was to make good use of the custom MENU set "Q"

065 PG "A" button custom menu
066 PG "B" button custom menu
067 PG "C" button custom menu

So for most uses, I'll just toggle the "DSP" key that will show me the DSP key options, or will pop right up for the custom "Q" menu keys.

I programmed the custom menu Q for direct access to the IPO preamp toggle, and B and C for either 2.3 or 500 khz filter options. When listening to CW, I don't like the 240hz narrow audio filter, so I turn DBF off, and use either my custom B or C for wide and narrrow.

Toggling back and forth between the built-in DSP keys, and the custom programmed A/B/C keys in menu "Q", reduced a lot of former menus scrolling for me.

I needed a little help in the eyesight dept, so in menu "I", (nice mnemonic!) I quickly tap the [disp] button to toggle between large and small fonts for the frequency readout. On the 897, you can still see menu options, but on the 857 when you toggle to the large frequency font, some of the menu options in the display disappear until you go back to a small font. No problem, I just set the option, and return to the large font.

I like both rigs a lot! Can't decide.......

 

[CalebATC]

Ok, thank you.

Looking forward to playing with the FT-897.