so i've had my FT-857D for probably six or seven years now and always ran it bone stock because i was always kind of nervous about voiding the warranty and whatever. warranty's long gone obviously and i finally just dove in and did the mars/cap mod to open up the TX range and also installed the SP-8 speaker which made a bigger difference than i expected honestly.

but the thing that really got me was doing the IF DSP tweak i found on eham - basically adjusting the filter bandwidth settings through the menu in a way yaesu doesnt document publicly. took me a while to find the right menu combo and i was sweating a little bit because the radio went blank for a second and i thought i bricked it, but it came back and the difference on a crowded 40m band is actually noticeable. signals i was having to really work to pull out are just cleaner now.

anyone else been modding their 857 or similar radios? im curious what mods people think are actually worth doing vs the ones that are just placebo. i've seen some sketchy stuff on youtube that i wouldnt touch with a ten foot pole

the collins filter mod is the one i always tell people to do first on the 857, way before any of the other stuff. drop a genuine collins mechanical filter in the IF chain and you're basically getting a different radio. i did mine about four years ago and it was maybe a 45 minute job if you're comfortable with a soldering iron and not clumsy about it. the stock ceramic filters are just kind of mediocre for anything crowded.

the mars/cap thing is fine but honestly if you're just operating on normal ham bands it doesnt change your day to day much. the IF filter though you'll notice immediately on 40 and 80, especially late in the evening when everyone and their brother is on. i paid something like 35 bucks for the filter on ebay and it was genuinely one of the best bang for buck upgrades ive done on any radio.

which IF DSP menu thing are you talking about exactly? i tried looking it up and found like three different versions of instructions that all contradict each other lol. mine is the D version with the newer firmware so im not sure if the menu numbers are even the same