With a burning hot $100 gift card to HRO from my mother-in-law as a Christmas present, I visited the Phoenix store today and brought home a new radio. Yaesu FT-891! I had been wanting to purchase the FT-891 as an upgrade to my FT-897D that I’ve been using for many years. The new radio has a USB port for CAT control, but retains the same data ports for the tuner and other devices. It also has built in recording options for automated CQ messages/calling that I plan to use to save the voice. I do like the LCD screen better than the older radio too. We’ll be using this radio on many future POTA adventures.
I powered the radio up in the shack and connected it to the hex beam. After a bit of tuning around and adjusting settings from defaults, I found Nathan W4NDK, who was operating portable in North Carolina and live streaming from his car on 20m, for the first QSO with my new radio.
Also, if you haven’t seen this, Jeff K3JRZ made a funny metal rock song remix after purchasing a Yaesu FT-891. Jeff also does a lot of great POTA videos, so subscribe to his channel.