[amsat-bb] Re: Yaesu FT857/897 on satellites

[Howard Kowall]

Good Morning John
I use a FT897D for satellite and also a FT817 for Full Duplex operation
I use them together so I can hear myself on the downlink (which is the 
proper way to do it).
It receives the satellite fine(both rigs)but I would not consider the Ft897D 
a upgrade or vise versa,the best upgrade to do as a first thing is the 
antenna and cable and quality connectors.The draw back that I don't like on 
the Yaesu rigs is that the cat system cannot work during transmit,so Doppler 
is not corrected when you transmit and can be a bit of a pain when trying to 
setup your software for calibration.Its not to big of a deal and you can 
work around it.I personal believe that upgrading to any one of the multi 
band and multi mode rigs wont show any improvement.I have learnt allot from 
this board over this year and I live buy this  rule (High Gain Low Loss).If 
I had an Icom and I wanted to buy another rig to run full duplex,I would buy 
a Icom,just for the fact that I mentioned above about Doppler correction and 
calibration.In order to upgrade your transceiver it  is best to buy a rig 
that is design for satellite operation (IC910H,TS2000,FT897D,FT736R,etc)
this is just my personal opinion.
Good Luck
Howard
VE4ISP
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Geiger" <aa5jg at yahoo.com>
To: <amsat-bb at amsat.org>; <yaesu at mailman.qth.net>; <ft897 at yahoogroups.com>; 
<ft857 at yahoogroups.com>; <ft-857 at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 10:57 PM
Subject: [amsat-bb] Yaesu FT857/897 on satellites


> Is anyone on the list using a Yaesu FT897 or FT857 on the LEO satellites 
> (both FM and SSB)?  I am currently using an Icom 706MKIIG with pretty good 
> results, but have been thinking about "upgrading" to a Yaesu FT897D or 
> maybe a FT857D.  I have used some Yaesu rigs on the sats before and the 
> 706MKIIG seems to hear them better, especially AO27.
>
> I don't have a big setup-Cushcraft dualband yagi (5 elements on each band) 
> with no elevation, so signals are not rockcrushing from the satellites. 
> The QST reviews show that the Icom has better sensitivity on 70cm SSB (MDS 
> of -143 vs -139 dbm) and on FM (.16 vs .21 microvolts) but are those 
> differences really meaningful?  Do the 897 and 857 still receive the sats 
> really good with a minimal setup?
>
> 73s John AA5JG
>
>
>
>
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