- Coming up, I take a deep dive
into the features and functions of the Yaesu FT-891.
If you are new to this radio or thinking of buying one,
you'll certainly wanna keep watching.
(rock music)
Hi I'm Michael, KB9VBR, your host for Ham Radio Q&A,
I'm on a mission to inspire and educate
the amateur radio community,
and this is my continuing series
on the Yaesu FT-891 Portable Transceiver.
The FT-891 packs quite a punch in a very small package,
but the biggest complaint is the user interface
as the limited number of buttons
and hides many of the functions behind the menus.
Well, in this video we are gonna dig into those buttons
and functions and show you how to make the most
of this extremely versatile rig.
To begin with, let's start out at the front of the rig.
Looking towards the display,
you have a row of buttons on the top
and bottom of the display,
two knobs on the left
and a larger tuning knob on the right.
The buttons on the top handle frequency,
tuning, and mode features
and the buttons on the bottom
are functions that deeper control the radio.
On the left is the volume
and multifunction controller knob.
We turn on the radio by pressing and holding
the red power button
at the top right of the transceiver.
You'll receive a brief welcome message
in your power source voltage
at the bottom right of the screen.
To lock the buttons,
momentarily press that same power button.
To adjust the volume,
turn the AF level knob on the upper left of the unit.
Behind the AF level is the RF gain.
The RF gain rotates 360 degrees,
and most of the time you'll have it turned
to its maximum signal,
although you can turn it down
if you are receiving a very strong signal.
Below the volume knob is the multifunction controller.
This knob rotates and presses in
and works with the Function button in selecting menu items.
To adjust the frequency, you rotate the tuning knob.
Like any transceiver you spin the dial left or right.
If you want to move quickly to a frequency,
you can press the Fast button.
This is located on the top unit
left of the power button.
This changes the step rate from 10 hertz to 100 hertz
per step or 20 kilohertz for an entire dial rotation.
Below the tuning knob is the drag control.
You can tighten or loosen the drag of the knob
to your personal preference.
To the left it will be at its loosest settings
and as you move the slider to the right,
the drag will tighten.
To select a band to operate on,
press the Band button on the top of the panel.
You will see all the available
amateur bands listed numerically.
Turn the tuning dial to select a band.
When you pause from turning the dial,
the radio will switch to that band.
Behind the Band button is the Mode button.
This is where you select the mode of operation,
be it sideband, CW, DATA or something else.
Press and hold the Band button
to access the Mode button.
Again, turn the tuning dial to select the mode,
and when you pause from the dial,
the radio will switch to that mode.
Moving to the left, the next four buttons
deal with memory and VFO switching.
The FT-891 has only one VFO,
but you can choose between a main band
and sub-band using the A/B button.
Pressing the button momentarily will shift
between the two, while a long press
will set both the VFOs to the same data
and frequency values.
This is a handy function
if you wanna quickly switch between two defined bands,
frequencies or modes.
Next up are the V to M and M to V buttons.
These buttons can assign a VFO frequency
and setting to a memory channel
or a memory channel to the VFO.
If you frequent a net on a certain frequency,
you can put it into a memory channel
and if the net needs to move,
pressing the Memory to VFO button
will allow you to quickly make that adjustment.
Another feature of the FT-891
is that the 60 meter frequencies
are already preassigned to 10 memory channels.
Since the 60 meter band is channelized,
this makes getting on the band very easy.
Press the VFO to Memory key to get into memory mode
and then rotate the multifunction dial
until you get to the 60 meter channels.
Those are channel 501 to 510.
There are five channels for the sideband operation
and five channels for CW operation.
The last button on the top is the QMB
or Quick Memory Bank.
The QMB are five temporary memory channels
where frequencies are added in a first in,
first out fashion.
Say you wanna monitor two or more frequencies,
like there is a station on frequency one
that it's in the pileup
and it's is too big to break,
well, you can mark that frequency,
move on and quickly return to it.
Press and hold QMB to add the frequency to the list.
Then when you tune away,
you can momentarily press QMB again to return to it.
You can do this for up to five frequencies,
and when you add a sixth,
the first one on your list will be discarded.
(Man speaking in foreign language)
Moving to the bottom of the display,
you'll find the Function button,
three programmable buttons marked A, B and C
and a Clarifier button.
Well, starting with the clarifier,
this is also known as Receive Incremental Tuning
or RIT on other brands of transceivers.
You can adjust your receive frequency
while keeping your transmit frequency constant.
This is handy if the station calling you
is slightly off frequency,
but you wanna maintain your transmit frequency.
To activate, press the Clarifier button
and turn the multifunction knob.
You can reset the clarifier receive frequency
by pressing and holding the Multifunction button.
The A, B and C buttons
on my radio may be different than what you see on yours.
That's because I've programmed my buttons
for my most used functions of the transceiver.
The default setting when you purchase the radio
are IF Shift, scope, and noise blanker.
But I seldom use the scope and noise blanker
so I replaced them with digital notch filter
and a voice memory keyer.
The front buttons are easily customizable,
so if there is a function you find yourself
frequently going to,
feel free to customize your front buttons
to your own personal preference.
To do that, press the Function button
to enter the function menus
and rotate the multifunction dial to select a function.
Now press and hold either the A, B or C button.
That function will move to the corresponding button.
Speaking of function menus,
there are three standard function menus on the FT-891
and a few extra ones depending on what
advanced features you are using.
For example, the voice memory keyer menu,
which we highlighted in a previous video
can be enabled from the radio's main menu.
We'll talk about the other special menus in a future video,
but right now we are gonna concentrate
on the three default menus.
Repeated pressing of the Function button
toggles through the Function menu screens.
When you wanna exit the Function menu,
press the Clarifier button to return to the main display.
To select a menu item,
use the Multifunction button to highlight the menu item
and then press the Multifunction button
to either activate or adjust the menu setting.
For example, say we want to activate the speech processor,
this increases the average power output
while in sideband mode.
We rotate the multifunction knob
to highlight the PRC feature
and then press the button.
The processor level pop up screen will appear
and we can rotate the multifunction dial
to change that setting.
Press the Multifunction button to close the pop up.
To turn off the processor,
press the button again so that the function item
is no longer bolded.
Now that you know how to adjust a setting,
let's go through the functions on the first screen.
TNR or Tuner activates the Yaesu's ATAS-100
or ATAS-120 auto tune antenna.
If the ATAS-120 is not connected,
the button will do nothing.
Vox, V-O-X puts the transceiver
is into voice operated mode.
That's handy if you are wearing a headset
and don't wanna press the Push to talk button.
PRC is the speech processor.
I run my processor at the default level of 50,
and depending on your voice quality,
you may wanna make an adjustment.
To do that, you will wanna watch the ALC meter
while transmitting and then make those adjustments.
We'll talk about ALC in a bit.
Next is monitor.
This channels your transmitted audio to your headphone.
Handy for making audio adjustments,
I usually leave the monitor off.
SPL is for split operation,
enabling it will set an adjustable,
five kilohertz offset between your A and B VFOs.
Some DX operations use split operation
as a way of managing pile ups.
IPO is called Intercept Point Optimization.
This is what Yaesu calls the Internal Receive Preamplifier.
It will amplify weak signals
while minimizing strong signal overload.
The FT-891 has only one IPO setting, either on or off.
Conversely, ATT is the attenuation.
This will attenuate your front end receive by 12dB.
Also handy for strong nearby signals.
There is only one attenuation setting on the FT-891,
either on or off.
NAR is the one-touch narrow DSP filter.
Pressing this will set your deviation
down to 1.8 kilohertz for sideband
or 500 hertz for CW.
You can also use this one-touch button
for quick narrow settings
without having to use the more adjustable bandwidth control.
NB is the noise blanker.
The FT-891 has a very capable
and adjustable noise blanker.
This is used to eliminate pulse noise
from vehicle engines while mobile.
When you activate the control,
you can select a setting between zero and 10,
with 10 being the most aggressive.
Turn the knob until the noise just disappears,
I've found it will eliminate most engine noise
at around the four or the five setting.
SFT is the IF or Intermediate Frequency shift feature.
I find this to be very useful
as it allows you to adjust the DSP filter passband
to reduce or eliminate nearby noise.
For example, if another station sets up
near your operating frequency,
you can use the IF Shift to move your passband
and eliminate that noise.
I keep this button on my front panel for that very reason.
Now, we talked about the WDH or Width filter
when describing the the narrow band function.
Width allows you to adjust your passband
from 1.8 to 3.2 kilohertz for sideband
and 500 to three kilohertz for CW.
The default for both of these modes is 2.4 kilohertz.
Increasing the bandwidth will give you fuller audio
but opens you up to more interference.
Reducing the bandwidth helps eliminate interference
but shortens your audio range.
If you use the IF Shift
and the Bandwidth functions together,
you can get really creative
in fighting adjacent interference.
The last interference fighter on this screen
is the NCH or Notch filter.
The FT-891 has a digital notch filter
that we will talk about in a bit,
but you can also manually adjust the notch
to null out a strong adjacent signal.
This is good for eliminating tuner uppers, birdies,
or other types of atmospheric or manmade noises.
And that's all the functions on page one,
moving onto page two,
by pressing that function key again,
the first menu item that we see is the MTR or Meter.
This allows us to select which display function meter
we will see during transmit.
Commonly, the SWR meter is displayed
but you can view up to five different meters.
Transmit Power, ALC, SWR, Speech Compressor,
and IDD which is the current drain.
The two meters that I like to use
are either the SWR or the ALC.
I'll use ALC to adjust the mic gain,
processor and I'll transmit audio levels.
This helps you modulate your voice
so you don't overdrive the transmitter.
In the field I'll often switch to the SWR meter
to watch how my antenna system is performing
and if I need to make an adjustment.
SCP is the spectrum scope monitor feature.
The FT-891 has a very rudimentary band scope.
I say rudimentary as the limited display,
processor capability, and single VFO
don't allow for much of a full feature band scope.
You won't see the resolution and activity
that you might get with an IC-7300,
and it has to mute the audio
in order to provide a live view of the scope.
But it can give you a nice picture of band activity
and you can use that scope
to move from one strong frequency to another.
In order to use the scope,
the SCP button has to be assigned
to one of your A, B or C buttons on the front panel.
Yaesu defaults the scope feature
to one of those buttons when you first get the radio.
Press the Scope to activate it.
The transceiver takes a snapshot of band activity.
And then you can use the tuning dial
to move from frequency to frequency.
When the scope feature is active,
the SPN button changes the span of bandwidth,
and the SWP or Sweep button takes another snapshot,
and the LV1 button changes the reference level,
or strength of the displayed signals.
To get into live mode,
press and hold for one second the SWP or the Sweep button.
To leave the band scope,
either press the Function or Clarifier buttons
on the front display.
AGC is the Automatic Gain Control.
AGC helps maintain a constant audio level
for changing or fading signals.
You have the choice between auto, fast,
mid or slow speeds.
I leave my AGC set to auto,
which seems to work well in the field for me.
If you turn the AGC off,
strong incoming signals may become distorted
and the S meter on receive will cease to function.
Leaving the AGC off can also affect
the digital noise reduction system.
Speaking of noise reduction,
the DNR is the DSP Noise Reduction.
The FT-891 has a 32 bit, intermediate frequency
Digital Signal Processor
that helps eliminate background noise.
Enabling the noise reduction gives you
a scale of one to 15 to choose from.
Now those aren't noise reduction levels,
instead they are 15 different noise profile algorithms
that you can choose from.
Some are more aggressive than others,
and some work better for different types of noise.
Yaesu really doesn't give you any guidance
on what profile does what,
but instead tells you to experiment
until you find a profile that works
for the current noise situation.
Honestly, I find that noise reduction
has kind of weird watery sound
and it can mask weak stations.
So I seldom use it in the field
unless I'm in a high noise environment
or I'm monitoring listening to some real strong stations.
And if that that's usually set at either the five
or the six settings.
I find five or six are the most pleasing to me.
(people chattering)
The DNF or DSP auto notch filter
automatically notch out a strong carrier signal
that pops up in the passband.
This feature is indispensable for eliminating tuner uppers,
and I will use it all the time.
This is the other button
that I've added to my programmable buttons
on the front panel of my display.
(people chattering)
CNT is the contour function.
The contour allows you to adjust
the shape of the incoming signal,
much like the tone controls on an audio receiver.
The high and low levels can be set
in the main menu
and then the contour lets you shift the mid range
of the audio.
Super handy for interference fighting,
you can use it to regain some of the lost fidelity
when you narrow a signal or shift the passband.
The MOX, MOX button engages the transmitter.
Press and hold the Multifunction button
to turn the transmitter on.
Press the button again to release the transmitter.
TXW is used in conjunction with the split operation.
When split is turned on,
pressing the TXW button will allow you to listen
to the transmit frequency.
MEQ enables the Parametric Microphone Equalizer.
You can tailor the transmit audio
of your voice style and microphone type.
This is handy if you are using say a studio mic
or you want an audio profile
that is sharp to break through pileups.
For standard field operation,
I leave the equalizer turned off.
Finally QMB is the quick memory bank channel list.
You can view what your last five
quick memory bank channels were.
Now the third and final screen are the CW settings.
And I'm gonna dedicate a separate video to CW operation
with the FT-891 as this video is really getting long enough.
But that's an overview of all the buttons
and function menus of the Yaesu FT-891.
There are a lot more features to this transceiver
and we haven't even dug deeper into the menu system.
But knowing these functions
will get you on the air
and be able to use this transceiver
at its highest potential.
Do you have any questions on the FT-891 functions?
Leave it in the comments below.
Also, if there is an FT-891 feature
or tip you want more instruction on,
let me know about it and I'll add it to the series.
But that's it for this time,
I'm Michael, KB9VBR, have a great day and 73.