Basic walk through on ft891 a great compact but complicated rig

Using an external 3rd party tuner with mine in my car, it gets its power from the radio and tunes with the tune button I set from the radio

 

I really don't like the menus on the 891, but then I've only had the thing for a week or two. I'd prefer a larger radio with more knobs - I actually thought about cutting away enough of the center console in front of the shift lever to hang a TS-430S under the dash, but I opted for the 891 when I found a good used one for a reasonable price. I figure it'll take me a while to get used to the menus to where I can Braille the thing (operate it by feel without looking) like I eventually did with my old dead FT-100. I like that it's small enough to mount in the cubby hole under the dash and still be able to reach the mounting screws to pull it out for portable operation. I'm having some trouble getting the noise reduction tweaked to where it kills the passing semis without taking out the voice of the person I'm talking to, but again, it's early days yet.

 

The menus certainly aren't great but then again, you shouldn't have to adjust a whole lot while driving. That's the best thing about this radio, you set it up the way you want then only fiddle with small things while operating. I like to have Width, DNR, and IPO on the program buttons while operating SSB or ZIN, WDH, DNR while operating CW. The rest of the stuff seems to be used so little, I don't mind not having it on the face.

I personally think the DNR algorithms got too aggressive in the DSP update and the old version is better. It isn't magic, but it can help some. NB is certainly your friend. I set mine at 5 and call it a day. The radio will still get overloaded from time to time by semis or bad power lines but I think most radios would. Plus those trucks overmodulating their CBs, pushing power and splattering across 100kHz probably knock out people's Wi-Fi as they drive by and pop open Tesla charging ports on the interstate.

Joshua

 

Try navigating the menus with the small knobs on the FT817/18!
I like my tiny 817 but when I move to the 891 it feels like a larger rig!