Recently I bought a new Yaesu FT-897D to replace a FT-817ND to give me a little
more xmit power when operating portable, but still using
internal batteries. When I tried to use SO-50 I found that I couldn't get thru
the sat. Back home I traced the problem to the CTCSS tone not
being set in the FT-897D via SatPC32 "T1" & "T2". My FT-817 worked without a
problem.
I contacted Erich Eichmann who quickly sent me a modified version to test. It
worked! Erich will be putting a patch version on his website
shortly: www.dk1tb.de See the English page and then Download page. I thank
Erich for making the change & so quickly - much quicker than
me in sending this to the AMSAT BB!
Detailed Description - for those interested:
The set CTCSS tone frequency is apparently the only CAT command that is
different for the FT-857/897 from the FT-817. The 5-byte
command for the FT-817 contains the tone frequency in bytes #1 & 2, and the
command Opcode "0B" in byte five. Bytes #3 & 4 are only
place holders and are set to ASCII code zero by the SatPC32 program. For the
FT-857/897 bytes #3 & 4 are used to set the receive CTCSS
tone frequency. Apparently even if the receive tone is not being used, bytes
#3 & 4 must contain a valid tone frequency. It looked like with
ASCII code zero in bytes #3 & 4 that the radio would interpret the command as
invalid and never set the Tx tone. There is no clarification of
this in the user manual. Erich has now sent the Tx tone in both the Tx tone
bytes and the Rx tone bytes (byte 1 = byte 3, byte 2 = byte 4).
This appears to correct the problem of tone not being set.
Now in SatPC32, for SO-50, when "T0" is clicked to get "T1", the CTCSS tone of
67.0 is set in the FT-897 (as seen in Menu Mode 083). When
"T1" is clicked to get "T2" to enable SO-50, the CTCSS tone of 74.4 is set in
the radio (as seen in Menu Mode 083). When "T2" is clicked to get
"T0" for tone OFF, the CTCSS tone encoder is turned off but the tone of 74.4
still remains in Menu Mode 083 even though it is not being used.
So now the CTCSS tone control function in SatPC32 works on the FT-897 (and
should on the FT-857) just like it worked on the FT-817.
The CAT commands on all three radios to turn ON CTCSS encoding is (4A xx xx xx
xx 0A) and to turn OFF is (8A xx xx xx xx 0A). The tone
ON/OFF function always has worked for all three radios. On the FT-897 I could
see "TEN" on the display when the CTCSS tone encoder was
ON either "T1" & "T2" in SatPC32), and then "TEN" would disappear from the
display when the tone encoder was OFF ("T0" in SatPC32).
For testing the transmitted CTCSS tone I found that the "Tone Search Scanning"
function (tone decoder) built into the Yaesu VX-6R HT,
the FT-817ND and the FT-897D, worked well and was just what I needed!
Thanks again to Erich for a great program, his program support & support of
AMSAT!
73's - Tom, KA6SIP
Tom Deeble - KA6SIP
Mt. Diablo Amateur Radio Club Membership Chairman
ka6...@aol.com
PACIFICON - Oct 11-13, 2013
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