yaseu FT-857D owners. Can you answer this?
- Thread starter kojackJKU
- Start date
DaveInDenver
Middle Income Semi-Redneck
There is nothing to 'fix', the FT-857 is just not designed to transmit on the CB bands.
Javelinadave
Adventurer
The original poster appears to be Canadian. They may have different rules regarding this.
DaveInDenver
Middle Income Semi-Redneck
The Canadian equivalent is called GRS, general radio service. Many of the FCC rules are replicated by Industry Canada in their rules, although not every one to the letter.
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/sf01016.html
Modifying a radio would violate the type acceptance rules just like it would here. It's not impossible to re-engineer a ham radio to do CB but the advice not to is primarily legal, the FCC and IC can issue fines and seize radios. Second it's primarily to protect the integrity of ham radio operators. CB is what it is, a lot of inconsiderate users with foul language. Why risk loss or damage to a $700 radio to do what a $50 CB radio already does?
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I want to be able to transmit in CB and HAM because I travel on the highways a lot in the night time and communication to the truck drivers is great to keep up on road conditions, moose spottings and other hazards. I want HAM to get the longer reach when im way up in the back country. I have never heard of anyone in my province getting hauled up, fined, etc for any radio modifications. I have a yaseu of some sort with a few internal mods and never had anyone knocking on my door.
Space in the Jeep is at a premium and having an all in one unit would make tons of sense. SO, long story short, I SHOULD"NT do it, BUT....it is possible with this radio....am I getting this correct?
Space in the Jeep is at a premium and having an all in one unit would make tons of sense. SO, long story short, I SHOULD"NT do it, BUT....it is possible with this radio....am I getting this correct?
Short answer is CB (in US, don't know about CA) is AM modulation at 4watts max in the vicinity of 11m. The 857 won't transmit in that range without a mod, and even with the mod isn't setup to be channelized. So you will have to modify radio for broadband transmit, correctly program in the correct frequencies of the CB channels, ensure your power levels are stopped down from the default 100 watts, set the radio for AM modulation, and find an antenna that can be tuned for 11 meters (some ham antennas like my outbacker are hard wired to the ham bands only, and the 11m band may be too far out to use without a antenna tuner, and CB specific antennas are unlikely to work well for other ham bands.)
thank you Abruzzi, Now I understand more. Maybe I can run my CB where its too up above the mirror, and mount the head of the 857 on my e dock, I just remembered that the face of the 857 comes off the main unit, that makes mounting that much easier.
its ok to have the two antenna next to each other? I did not realize the cb is AM frequencies, I just thought they were a blocked FM freq. in the HAM radios.
its ok to have the two antenna next to each other? I did not realize the cb is AM frequencies, I just thought they were a blocked FM freq. in the HAM radios.
I'm not an expert, but my understanding is the danger of mounting two antennas too close to each other is if they touch while you are transmitting. The other thing to note is I believe the 857 has two antenna connectors on the back. One for VHF and above and one for HF. If your goal is to get ham 2m and 70cm as well as CB, I'd probably skip the 857. (HF on mobile is certainly possible, but is a much more complicated proposition). I'd get a small dual band VHF/UHF ham radio like the Kenwood V71, then add the smallest CB you can find (there is one built into a mic.). Run two antennas with some physical separation (one front, one back, or one left fender, the other right fender.)
BTW, the setup I described will cost about half of a FT857. If you really want HF on you vehicle you will have to do something different, but I just don't see a whole lot of point to mobile HF (but that's just me.)
BTW, the setup I described will cost about half of a FT857. If you really want HF on you vehicle you will have to do something different, but I just don't see a whole lot of point to mobile HF (but that's just me.)
frdmskr, I am looking to have cb, and whatever the amateur radio uses. we have some good repeaters around since the power company etc had them put up to keep track of their workers and I think they let other people connect to them. or they have a civilian repeater system installed on their towers. From what someone told me is that you can connect some how to them in the back country.
DaveInDenver
Middle Income Semi-Redneck
Do you even hold a ham license?
It seems that you are not familiar with what you're looking to do. Ham can be anything from medium/high frequency up to microwave frequencies. CB/GRS is a 11m (27 MHz) channelized band, which is the upper end of the HF spectrum which runs from 160m (1.8 MHz) to 10m (28 MHz). VHF runs from 6m (50 MHz) to 1.25m (220 MHz). The UHF band is 70cm (440 MHz) up to 13cm (2.4 GHz).
Then within each band there are several potential modes, AM, FM, SSB, CW, etc. Most of the time VHF and higher is done with FM or digital modes (P25, DMR, etc.), although sometimes people use SSB on 2m. The lower bands are often SSB, CW (Morse), low bandwidth digital like JT65, RTTY.
From the sound of it, since you're talking about repeaters, you most likely want 2m VHF or 70cm UHF FM. This is nothing like 11m AM such as CB.
The FT-857 is a very flexible radio, could in theory be tricked into doing CB and covers all of the amateur spectrum from 160m up to 70cm in all modes. But if all you want to do is CB and talk into VHF repeaters getting a dual band FM mobile and a dedicated CB would be 1/2 the cost or less compared to a FT-857 (these new are about $800 before tuners and antennas) and wouldn't require modification that will void any warranty nor break any rules.
It seems that you are not familiar with what you're looking to do. Ham can be anything from medium/high frequency up to microwave frequencies. CB/GRS is a 11m (27 MHz) channelized band, which is the upper end of the HF spectrum which runs from 160m (1.8 MHz) to 10m (28 MHz). VHF runs from 6m (50 MHz) to 1.25m (220 MHz). The UHF band is 70cm (440 MHz) up to 13cm (2.4 GHz).
Then within each band there are several potential modes, AM, FM, SSB, CW, etc. Most of the time VHF and higher is done with FM or digital modes (P25, DMR, etc.), although sometimes people use SSB on 2m. The lower bands are often SSB, CW (Morse), low bandwidth digital like JT65, RTTY.
From the sound of it, since you're talking about repeaters, you most likely want 2m VHF or 70cm UHF FM. This is nothing like 11m AM such as CB.
The FT-857 is a very flexible radio, could in theory be tricked into doing CB and covers all of the amateur spectrum from 160m up to 70cm in all modes. But if all you want to do is CB and talk into VHF repeaters getting a dual band FM mobile and a dedicated CB would be 1/2 the cost or less compared to a FT-857 (these new are about $800 before tuners and antennas) and wouldn't require modification that will void any warranty nor break any rules.
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The cost is not so much the issue as space. I do NOT have a HAM licence yet, Im going to be working on getting one in the near future. Its a cool thing to have. Very useful. IThat have a yaesu radio now because we used them for work. Our workplace used to have a frequency we used to communicate back and forth, and I ran both a cb and the yaesu in my ford truck. But with a jeep now, space is very limited. the Yaesu will take up way to much room. That's why I like the 857, hide the main unit, and run the head on my e dock. perfect setup for my usage. I was wondering about cb as it would be cool to have everything in one unit. It would be great to have a radio that's detachable face, with a completely separate setup for cb and HAM band radios. you could in theory use the same antenna and the radio would do all the switching. I cannot see why that would be banned by the FCC or Canadian counterparts. It is essentially 2 separate radios housed in one using sharing a display.