On 2008-02-07, Tom Ring wrote:
Does anyone have any first hand experience/opinions of either of these radios?

Just one, do NOT buy the D model of this radio, or its twin, the 857.
The only real change was they made it impossible to do the software mods
on it. To put it another way, if you have the 897 instead of the 897D,
you can easily add the 60m "channels" to normal memory locations after
doing the software mod.

I like software mods, once you don't brick the thing

That being said, both the D and non-D models have some serious hardware

SNIP

Ok, thanks for the information regarding the D/non-D models. Note made.


I own an 897 and an 857D, and they do not work at all alike on transmit,
though they are theoretically virtually identical. Both are very good on
receive for the design, and essentially the same. The 897 is great on
transmit, and the 857D is, to put it bluntly, absolute crap. I am

Interesting Tom. I have heard bad results from the 857D, but not anything
about the 857, as it is discontinued I think.

Have you any experience of the 817? I had thought about picking one up for
SOTA type stuff. The dollar is a good price for me at the moment

For more information on the 897/857, see the DG2IAQ document. I found a
copy on mods.dk. It may be available other places. It is very well done.

Yup, I have used mods.dk before. It is a good website.