Yep, I went ahead and did it. I have had an FT-857 for several years now, actually since the first year they came out, but it had developed problems with the HF/6m PA section going into oscillations on TX, 6m was useless and 10/12m had a problem sometimes but not always. I debated for some while about sending it out for repairs or doing it myself but when I found out the repairs were a known issue with the early models and was fairly advanced considering the level of SMD's that had to be swapped out or added I decided to ship it out to be repaired and realigned for good measure as well. In talking about it to a buddy of mine a few days ago he offered to buy it from me. He is not into HF much at all and lives for VHF/UHF and even builds his own transverters. He was looking for a good VHF/UHF multimode and was complaining about the high cost of even the used gear out there today. He made me an offer I couldn't refuse given the state of the radio and what it would cost me to have it repaired. I told him he could buy a new FT-817 for what he offered me but he wanted something that had more power in order to better drive his transverters and match his other two 857's. I did a little mental math and figured if I took what he offered me and added what I figured it would cost for repairs at the going rate of $80/hr I was pretty close to the new price for the FT-857 without taxes etc. I said WTF and sold it to him and ordered a new FT-857D which should be here either on the weekend or early next week. It was shipped from Toronto today. 
