If you own an early non "D" version of this radio and tried to use it on 6 meters, you may have found it to be useless there. These things oscillate so badly in this band they can form a full power carrier in the SSB mode! For years people have been chasing this problem around thinking it was loose grounding screws with no help at all from Yaesu. The problem is this company knows they messed up and sold thousands of radios that would never pass FCC inspection if tested on 6 meters.
They had to go back and fix the problem they made in the 857D but will never post a service bulletin or admit they screwed up. They will be happy to charge you to fix their mistake. Problem is Ham's don't like being forced into the role of debugging new equipment and then being charged to fix a manufacturers mistake once spotted. Yaesu has refused to comment on this problem or elaborate on what they did in the "D" version to correct the problem.
It all comes down to a piece of conductive shielding tape being placed over the pre-driver stage to stop it from coupling to the final stage. If this company had any ethics (long since lost) they would be mailing everyone they screwed a piece of tape with a photo showing where to put it. But no, they want you to waste shipping and pay them to do the job they should have done the first time.
Look at an internal photo of the 857D and notice towards the right hand side there is a piece of silver colored, conductive tape over the pre-driver and RF transformer in this area. That is the fix they charge you for. Another issue with these radios is the LCD display is not suitable for use in vehicles where the temperature could exceed 100 degrees. The connections to the LCD driver will fail one line at a time from temperature changes and the only fix is to replace it with the same junk.
They had to go back and fix the problem they made in the 857D but will never post a service bulletin or admit they screwed up. They will be happy to charge you to fix their mistake. Problem is Ham's don't like being forced into the role of debugging new equipment and then being charged to fix a manufacturers mistake once spotted. Yaesu has refused to comment on this problem or elaborate on what they did in the "D" version to correct the problem.
It all comes down to a piece of conductive shielding tape being placed over the pre-driver stage to stop it from coupling to the final stage. If this company had any ethics (long since lost) they would be mailing everyone they screwed a piece of tape with a photo showing where to put it. But no, they want you to waste shipping and pay them to do the job they should have done the first time.
Look at an internal photo of the 857D and notice towards the right hand side there is a piece of silver colored, conductive tape over the pre-driver and RF transformer in this area. That is the fix they charge you for. Another issue with these radios is the LCD display is not suitable for use in vehicles where the temperature could exceed 100 degrees. The connections to the LCD driver will fail one line at a time from temperature changes and the only fix is to replace it with the same junk.