Basic walk through on ft891 a great compact but complicated rig

There seems to be a rash lately of "reviews" of equipment being posted by people with little or no hand-on experience with they're reviewing.

 

The "LAP" is an indicator that you have a cable connected to the Linear Amp control port / circuit. In my case, it is a cable that is connecting to the Tunematic antenna controller.
73 - KM4RT

 

Question for FT-891 owners:

I had one of these with a completely awful audio bug generated by poor RF design - digital hash on the input lines every time CAT control pinged the rig for frequency information (more than once per second). It occurred with the audio volume all the way off and was unfixable. I won't go into the story which included direct communication with Yaesu management level in Japan, but the result is that Yaesu did such a horrible job with customer service (and was unmoving in requests for problem fixes) that I've moved to other companies permanently.

Here's a perfect example of the problem:



But I am curious - those who own it now: do you use CAT control, and can you hear any problems? Did they fix it? When?

73
W1PJE

 

Mine does not do this. I was so worried about these reports, I corresponded with Gigaparts and then Yaesu to ask about it. It seems that the bug was fixed at some point, and only early versions of the radio had this problem (even then, it was sporadic, with lots of them not doing it). I didn't get technical details, but was assured that current production didn't have the issue. I took the leap, and have been happy with it.

 

The truth is, when you stack an antenna tuner and a sound card interface on top of the 891 you've got a pile of stuff almost as big as the FT-991A. Just look past this turkey from Yaesu and go straight to the 991A. It's a much better HF rig, plus you get all-mode VHF/UHF as a bonus.

(Oh, and the IC-7100 is a darned good rig, too.)

 

I've used the 891 about 3 yrs now. Mainly c w and it is awesome. Especially for the price I paid with a free heil mic. Don't fiddle with the menus so no issue for me

 

You don't need a soundcard interface with the FT891. Just buy the CT39A packet cable and install a couple of 1/8" plugs on the proper wires. Then plug it into the digital port on the radio and into your soundcard on the computer. You can use CAT control to do the PTT switching, or the FT891 has a digital VOX circuit you can use to put the rig in transmit when the computer starts the transmit audio.

There, you just saved yourself $100 and have one less box on top of the radio now.

73 John AF5CC

 

I have a Yaesu FT-891 and love it. Menus are menus and the Advanced Manual is great. I use it daily. Have 45A Anderson-Powerpoles both in truck and in shack - and I take the radio with me often. In the mobile I talk all over the USA and Canada with ease (Hustler RM-40s antenna on truck). Once the menus are set, there is no need to keep changing things. If I can hear them, I can usually talk to them with only 100 watts - mic works great. If someone wants to do digital communications, probably should be the Icom 7300 - the Yaesu doesn't have a soundcard built in. I love the radio and it is very popular with POTA activations. Compact, lightweight, affordable, and works GREAT!

 

I think it would be great if the 891 had a built in sound card. But I really don't see why it's such a big deal that it's not there -- it's a minor inconvenience.

I picked up an audio splitter cable, a tiny sound card dongle, and a DIN connector... probably $20 or so. And I can do FT8, RTTY, PSK31, etc, no problem.

Sure it's an extra bit of cabling, but in the grand scheme of things is pretty insignificant. It's certainly not enough to justify hundreds of dollars more for a radio that has one built in.

Pick the IC-7300 because if it's waterfall, or is nice audio reports, the accessible knobs and buttons, or something else. But its value must assuredly be much more than the usb sound card interface! I'd expect it to be nicer to the tune of the extra $400 it costs, not because it obviate the need for 6" of extra cabling!

 

Yeuck!!!!! Thats why i dont buy yaesu radios.
For the same money you can buy a second hand ic706mk2g if you have enough force to pry it out of the hands of a dying fighting om.
Seriously, all those options of how to screw up the radio. Why not just have a few automatic set up modes, that detect the background interference (as per your video) and select the correct filters to knock out that grisley electrical interference in the background.
Again i say long live the 706mk2g, the best mobile/base/marine/aircraft/portable radio ever made... Or am i a bit biased. Perhaps the fact ive bought 4 or 5 of them over the past 25 years, and still prefer them over everything else...