so ive been running my FT-857D for a few years now mostly on HF and occasional VHF/UHF stuff and i always kinda wondered if doing the mars/cap mod would actually make a noticeable difference in day to day use. well last weekend i finally pulled the trigger and opened her up, moved the diode, and reflashed the menu options. the whole process took maybe 45 minutes including me being paranoid and triple checking the service manual like four times before touching anything.

honestly the TX range extension was the obvious part but what i actually didnt expect was messing around with some of the menu settings that were locked before really changed how the rig felt to operate. set up a couple things for digital modes that i couldnt get to before without annoying workarounds. also retuned the mic gain a bit while i had everything open because mine always seemed a little hot on SSB and people said i was peaking too hard.

anyway not really a question i guess just curious if anyone else has gone down this rabbit hole with the 857 or similar rigs and what other mods you thought were actually worth doing vs the ones that sound cool online but dont really pan out in practice. ive seen some stuff about the internal speaker mod and the TCXO upgrade but im skeptical on both

the TCXO is 100% worth it if you do any digital modes at all, full stop. i was skeptical too until i started having drift issues on FT8 and realized my reference was just wandering around especially in the first 20-30 minutes after powerup. dropped in the TCXO and that whole problem basically went away. the 857 runs warm inside and the stock oscillator really does move around more than youd think.

the speaker mod i could take or leave honestly. yeah the stock speaker is pretty mediocre but i mostly use headphones or an external speaker anyway so it never bugged me enough to bother. if youre using it portable and relying on the internal speaker a lot then maybe, but otherwise i wouldnt bother pulling the whole front panel apart again just for that.

one thing i did that actually made a real difference on SSB was tweaking the TX EQ in the menu — took me forever to find the right combination but once i did people stopped complaining about my audio sounding boxy. some guys go nuts with external processors but honestly the internal options on the 857 are more capable than most people realize, they just bury everything in sub-menus.

yeah did the mars mod on mine a couple years back, pretty standard stuff. what i actually spent more time on was the receive side — added a little external preselector for the HF bands and that made a bigger real world difference than any firmware unlock type thing. the 857's front end isnt the strongest and on a decent antenna you can get some intermod from strong locals if youre in a busy RF environment.

also if you havent already look into the CAT control setup if you do any logging or digital, that rig plays pretty nice with most software once you get the baud rate sorted out. i think i had mine set wrong for like six months before i actually read what hamlib wanted from it lol