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Reviews For: Yaesu FT-817

Category: QRP Radios (5 watts or less)

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Review Summary For : Yaesu FT-817
Reviews: 297MSRP: 769
Description:
All band 160m thru 10m plus 6m, 2m and 70cm, all mode QRP rig with internal batteries. PL259 on rear, BNC on front.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.yaesu.com/amateur/ft817.html
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
002974.6
K2GK Rating: 2009-07-17
Worth the cost to me Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I think it has a great receiver that is worth the price alone. Plug in a hunk of wire and you can lull yourself to sleep while keeping tabs on "d-boys" until Morpheus takes you away.

Transmitting 5 watts or less is frustrating sometimes, and finally making some distant contacts is very rewarding. You'll wish your arms were long enough to pat yourself on the back!

If you are really addicted to radio and have the opportunity to travel, take this puppy along. It weighs almost nothing and fits in your pocket or laptop bag. The battery lasts a long time even if you talk so you can appreciate the extra benefit of playing radio while your wife drags you out shopping.

Last time I was visiting the kids in Texas, I stopped into a Radio Shack and bought some speaker wire and cut a 40 meter dipole and had a blast.

Boo hoo to Carnival Cruise Lines for saying "NO" to ham radio on their ships.

Gary k2gk
W3PO Rating: 2009-06-30
Still running Time Owned: more than 12 months.
My 817 is 8 1/2 years old now and it is still my swiss army knife of radios. Since the arrival of the FT 1000D I do not use it as much as before but it sees plenty of action during 6m openings, and on the go ops, and to this day no issues whatsoever.
In a nutshell the 1KD is the best rig I have the pleasure to own and operate, and the 817 the most fun rig I have the pleasure to own and operate.
K6WAC Rating: 2009-03-29
CAN'T GO WRONG Time Owned: more than 12 months.
THIS IS A GREAT LITTLE QRP RADIO. Its built in keyer and all mode/all band operation make it quite suitable for field day, backpacking, camping and most outdoor operations.I have made contacts world wide on ssb-cw-psk 31-as well as my local repeaters. Don't expect everything from an inexpensive piece of equipment. After all, its still a QRP radio. So before going through buyer remorse, one should take a bit of time to compile a want list of features required in a radio purchase. If one is menu shy or needs 100 watts output, the 817 is not for them. Before buying any QRP radio or accessory follow a few guidelines that will help making a decision.
1. If you want a full power 100 watt radio, save your money up and buy one rather than rather than feeling confined by 5 watts of RF output. After all, QRP is not for everyone; its an acquired taste.
2. If you don't like the menus of the FT817,DON'T BUY IT! There are plenty of other radios out there that will suit your operating needs if the FT817 does not.
3. Know what you are looking for before you buy. Research the product before laying down the green. Read these forums and critically digest the information available from operators with first hand experience. Talk with other hams about their experience with the radio. They will be happy to discuss both the pros and the cons with you.
My experience with this little radio has been great. It performs well on all bands under all conditions and I would recommend it to any QRPer.
KE7GGZ Rating: 2009-03-18
I'm having too much fun with this radio! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I'd thought I'd give an update to this radio's performance.....My farthest contact was into Puerto Rico, yesterday on 14.236.5mhz from Quartzite, Arizona....Although I had to give my call sign 6, or 7 times and be patient with Otus, NP4G, I finally got my Call Sign repeated back to me correctly after he pulled me out of the mud! Everyone that I have contacted was surprised at the 5 watts that I am using on the HF bands including myself! What a great radio and I can't wait to make more contacts...The recieve is great, especially since Otus was a 5/0 on my S meter using my boom headst mic!
W0DKM Rating: 2008-11-09
FUN! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
FUN,and Quality.

I have the ft817nd, and the ic703 for QRP portable.

The 703 is almost twice the size and has twice the Power out.

Both great rigs. I like them both.

Qrp is not for new hams, But if you are seasoned like myself These Qrp rigs are a blast.

Its FUN Yelling your brains out in a pileup.

FUN, FUN, FUN,,,...
W4UDX Rating: 2008-10-24
Best rig per square inch Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I'm on my third FT-817. I keep selling or trading them off for 100 watt radios, but then end up with another 817. These radios are the best deal on the ham market when you figure features per square inch. They even have carrier oscillator shift for USB and LSB on receive and transmit. This feature is found on the much larger FT-920, but not many other rigs and certainly on no other radios in the $500 price range. As far as fun goes, in a recent EUDX contest I worked Wales, Germany, Portugal and Slovak Republic with 5 watts on sideband. The Slovak contact (OM7DX) amounts to over 1100 miles per watt! Not bad for SSB mode at the bottom of the sunspot cycle! The secret to this radio for fun is good antennas and avoid the 100 watt temptation or you will not persevere and cave in and use the 100 watt radio. But what fun is that? Anyone can put 100 watts into a tribander and work DX! 73 Mark W7ARF (ex W4UDX)
K2ID Rating: 2008-10-23
My goto rig Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
People often ask why I bought this rig. After all, if I want to work QRP I can just reduce the power on one of my other rigs. My reply is usually something along the lines of too much temptation when using a more powerful rig to crank it up when things get tough. I usually forget to mention that I can just carry this rig outside and plug it into an antenna and get on the air. I can bring it downstairs into my living room and monitor Dx and take it with me when I travel to monitor and work ALL bands. I have bought a hand held Yaqi to work satellites with it and have various qrp antennas to suit different situations that range from a simple telescoping antenna for monitoring to a Par three band end fed wire antenna. I even have a great QRP antenna tuner that I use with magnet wire to make random wire antennas inside of hotel rooms. Magnet wire will fit through the holes of a screen window in a hotel and no one notices it hanging down 5 floors. If nothing else, as I found out at the Dayton Hamvention, even if I do not make a QSO from inside my hotel room, this rig and a bottle of Jack Daniels can easily provide an evenings worth of fun. :)

I curently own a Yaesu FT-2000D and an Icom 746 Pro along with three HTs but I use the 817 the most. Since I do not own a VHF/UHF rig, I added a 45 watt Mirage VHF/UHF amp which gives me the same power as I would get from a mobile rig. I use it to listen to commercial radio, HF, 6 Meters and VHF/UHF. When I am in my office/shack, it is the rig I turn on to keep me company.

Then there is the thrill of a QRP contact and my most thrilling moment was workig Ducie Island with the 817 using a randow wire antenna. That is over 5000 miles from my QTH. Granted that the Ducie Is. Dxpedition had great ears but it still was a thrill for me. Right now the solar cycle is at a lull but I expect to be using the 817 more and more for transmit as the propagation improves. I have seen what can be done with just 5 watts and a length of wire.
WB0FDJ Rating: 2008-10-23
Fun little radio Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This radio is the real deal. Yeah, it doesn't have every bell and whistle known to current technology and there are things that it doesn't do. But for a lot of us who enjoy QRP this is a staple in our diet. I think back to 1979 when my sole rig was a Ten Tec Argonaut 509. The two years I owned by 509 are the best of my ham radio experience. With it I discovered QRP and honed my operating skills. That radio had no options, no filters, no nothing. I turn on this rig and the options it DOES have take my breath away! It small enough that I can actually put this in some of my larger coat pockets. I have the 500 Hz CW filter and also use the SCAF filter made by Idiom Press. This is a good "all purpose" QRP radio. I have used it with a portable antenna, set up in a local park, to work DX. This summer I worked ME and OH running the full 5W to an indoor slinky on 50 mHz. I compare this to the old Jeep CJ's: not pretty, sometimes not comfortable but will always get you there.
VK4KKD Rating: 2008-09-25
exceptional rig! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This little gem of a radio has got to be one of the best innovations ever to come on the market.
I have used it far more than any other rig in my collection - it serves at the home QTH to drive my 2m SSB weak signal station (mind you weak signal and 2m SSB is an oxymoron) - the little rig is used to feed 5w into my TE Systems 2m amp for a massive 400w out - clean as a whistle.
It is used to drive my 1296MHz. transverter - 2.5w giving 20w into the 2.4m dish.
This great little rig has served to make contacts with virtually every country running 2.5w on PSK31.
But the crowning glory of all this is that the FT-817 does all of this for me when I am portable! (Yes I do take a 2.4m dish portable - along with 4 x 12el DL6WU type yagis for 144MHz. and 8 x28el DL6WU type yagis for 432MHz. for a portable station)
Using the rubber ducky on the front BNC mount I have worked surprising 6m contacts over good distances.
One thing that is a no-no is using "trapped" antennae with qrp rigs - the traps soak up too much of the small output. I find the very best antennae to use with it on HF DX are mono-band 1/4 wave ground planes - purely resonant - no tuners or transformers - just purely resonant antennae - I do this by have a basic 6m antenna and carrying a bag full of numbered lengths of aluminium tubing which are then used to make the antenna resonant on 10m or 15m or 20m. I also run LMR400 coax to make sure the max. amount of signal actually reaches the antenna. (I am of course not talking about using the radio as a simple little "backpack" bushwalker rig)
I have gone through several battery packs (mine is the older model with the rotten Ni-cad things) - but mostly I run two 10ah gellcells and they run the rig for a full two days at 2.5w.
Small yet functional - when one uses it within its limitations and accepts the small buttons and knobs it is impossible to give this rig anything other than a solid 10 out of 10. I have personally given this radio a FLOGGING - it has not been used so much as ABUSED - and it just keeps on performing flawlessly. But it is a Yaesu after all and to be totally honest I have not had a problem with any of my Yaesu radios in the 25 years I have been abusing them. Unlike the other "brand" rigs which have fallen over one after the other as they could not handle the problems associated with hard portable usage. Long live the fantastic FT-817!!!
73 - Kev.

DL7ISA Rating: 2008-07-19
It works ! Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
My 817ND has the serial# 7xxxxxx, I bought it new. I dont find the Receiver not sensitive enough, although it cant beat the Icom IC-765 I had at all but that is not what the 817ND is made for anyways, I think.

I have build a short G5RV for using it on 40 and 20m and hanged it between 2 Trees on a Hill to work the Bands portable. Its exciting to work with this Radio portable on my self made Antenna and having QSOs even with only 5 Watts max. (if there arent to many high Power Stations with their Elbow Mentality).

The optional TCXO is not needed for me. On all Bands, including 2m in SSB the Frequency was not drifting.

The Reports I've got were always fine, even the Signal Strength was low because of the QRP. I think that's because the 817ND sounds smOOth, a bit more Bandwith would be even better. What I like VERY MUCH is the Menu to adjust the SSB receive and transmit Carrier Frequency +-300Hz, it realy makes a BIG Difference!

These are only few things I like about my 817, there are to many to mention here but I'll finish with this: The 817ND is not cheap nor easy build, its a quality product, complex, yet so easy to use and a Pleasure.