so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my FT-857D for like two years now, always kind of nervous about voiding warranty and whatever but the warranty is long gone at this point so last weekend i just went for it. pulled the radio apart, moved the little jumper thing, put it back together and honestly the hardest part was getting the case screws back in without stripping them because my screwdriver is garbage.

anyway it transmits outside the ham bands now which was the whole point since i do some MARS stuff occasionally and also wanted the flexibility. rx was already pretty wide on this radio so no change there. one thing i noticed though is that on some of the expanded freqs the ALC acts a little weird, like it hunts around a bit before settling. not sure if thats normal or if i did something slightly off. anyone else notice that after doing this mod, or is that just how it behaves outside its designed range

yeah the ALC behavior outside the ham bands is pretty normal on that radio, its not really calibrated for those freqs so it kind of does its best. as long as your power output looks reasonable on a wattmeter and youre not seeing reflected power go nuts i wouldnt stress it too much. i did the same mod on mine probably four years ago and still works fine for MARS nets. the 857D is a pretty solid little radio for modifications honestly, the community has been poking at them for years so theres good info out there if you dig around on eham or the yahoo groups archive before those got nuked.

did this same mod last year, ALC thing is totally normal dont worry about it. also while you have the thing apart did you do the fan mod? theres a resistor swap that makes the fan kick on earlier and run more agressively, makes a big difference if you run the radio hard for any length of time. mine used to get pretty warm during long digital sessions and after the fan mod its noticeably cooler. worth doing next time you crack the case open