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 ka6sip@aol.com PACIFICON - Oct 11-13, 2013