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Yaesu FT-857D: The curious case of… the PWR OUT bars

Recently, I dusted off the rig that I normally keep in the backpack for portable activities in a “ready to operate” state (and I emphasize that it is ready, not that it is used), to test a new 30 Ah LiFePo4 battery (that’s another story).

After turning it on, I connected the trusty Bird wattmeter, its dummy load and tested the various output powers across all the bands.

The power levels were all within specifications, but I noticed that on the HF frequencies from 14MHz and above, the bars only showed a couple of notches even though the radio was actually set to 100W.

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Icom IC-7300 repair: no transmission

I publish this article now even though I wrote it in december 2018.

Here we are, again.. murphy’s law strikes back!

Some time ago I got, together with some fellow ham radio friends, this Icom rig.

This is the first time I buy something “non Yaesu” because I was attracted by a multitude of positive reviews (most of all coming from our uncle Sam colleagues); furthermore for the appetite for hybrid SDR  technology and because of the hardware maturity of the model.

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