FT-817 Cheat Sheet - RadioManual

1 FT-817 Cheat Sheet (There are separate instructions for connecting thetransceiver to power and turning it on. Click meansto press a button and to release it immediately; pressand hold a button means to press it in and hold it for asecond. See the attached photo.)The front panelThe power switch is the button on the far right of thefront panel, upper corner, and it is labeled PWR. To theleft of the power switch is the LOCK key. Pressing thiskey locks the controls, preventing inadvertentfrequency changes. Continuing to the left, next is theV/M key; this key toggles between VFO and memorymodes.

2 The transmit/busy indicator is next. The lightis green when squelch opens and red whentransmitting. Finally, the last button before the LCD isthe F key. Clicking the F key displays the functionsavailable via the A, B, and C keys. (These keys arebelow the LCD screen.) The button to the left of the LCDis the HOME key; clicking it recalls your home knob to the left of the LCD is the SEL on the mode the radio is in, turning the SELknob tunes a frequency or selects a memory channel orfunction for the ABC keys. The large dial to the right ofthe LCD is the MAIN dial.

3 This is the main tuning dialfor the radio. (Generally, in VFO mode the SEL knob 2 tunes the VHF/UHF frequencies, and the MAIN dialtunes frequencies in other bands. Go figure.) On thebottom right of the front panel is a smaller knob calledthe SQL/RF knob. This knob has two parts, an innerknob and an outer dial. The inner knob adjusts thevolume . The outer dial adjusts the squelch. If you arelistening for a transmission that you know should bethere, the squelch may be set too high; turn the dialcounter-clockwise till you hear the LCD are the three FUNC keys, A, B, and the F key and use the SEL knob to scroll throughthe available functions which may be set by the bands are selected via the buttons on top ofthe radio above the front panel(BAND[DWN]/BAND[UP]).

4 Pressing these keys scrollsthrough the bands available on the radio. The MODE buttons to the left of the BAND buttons scroll throughLSB, USB, CW, CWR, AM, FM, DIG, and PKT. On VHF/UHF(144 and 440), FM is used radio has two antenna jacks, front and rear. Theradio is set to use one or the other, and the radio willnot transmit if it is not set to use the jack with theantenna in it. To select the front or rear jack, pressand hold the F key for one second. This makes the SELknob active for selecting menus as shown on the LCD.

5 3 Rotate the knob to select Menu #07. The only optionsare F and R, selected by rotating the MAIN dial. Whenthe rear connection is selected, the LCD shows an R; noindicator means the front connection has been front antenna jack is a BNC connector, and the rearantenna jack is an SO 239 connector. The two jacksare not compatible without a of the transceiverTo operate the transceiver, turn it on (press and holdthe PWR button until the radio beeps and comes alive),make sure an antenna is connected to the appropriatefront or rear jack, and that the jack is selected asshown by an F or R on the LCD.

6 Use the BAND[UP] orBAND[DWN] buttons to select the appropriate band. Thelast used frequency will be displayed as you scrollthrough the bands. For VHF/UHF, be sure the mode isFM (the mode is displayed in the upper right corner ofthe LCD). In FM mode, the SEL knob tunes thefrequency. (The microphone has up and down buttonswhich will cause the radio to scan up or down theselected frequency much faster than you can turn theknob.)Setting duplex and tone; repeater useOnce the frequency is tuned, to set the radio forrepeater use, click the F key and rotate the SEL knobuntil Function Row 4 is shown, and [RPT REV TON]shows on the LCD above the ABC keys.

7 RPT turns duplex 4 on or off and sets duplex for negative or positive. TheLCD will show for minus offset, + for positive offset,and nothing if in simplex. Press the A key to scrollthrough the options. Then press the C key to scrollthrough the tone selections. A T indicates tone encoderfor repeater use; T SQ indicates CTCSS encode/decode,and DCS is for digital squelch. Select T for repeateruse. To set the right tone for a repeater, press and holdC [TON] for one second. This activates Menu #48 onthe LCD; rotate the MAIN dial to select the desired tonefrequency.

8 When finished, press and hold the F key forone second to save the settings and exit to normaloperation. (The B key for [REV] reverses the transmitand receive frequencies; I have no idea why we d wantto do this.)Saving settings to memory; toggling from VFOto memorySettings may be saved to memory and recalled. Set thetransceiver as desired. Click the F key; rotate the SELknob to Function Row 2 [MW MC TAG] on the the A key [MW] to find an unused memorychannel -- if there is a frequency displayed, thememory channel shown is in use.

9 Rotate the SEL knobto select an unused channel or to overwrite a used and hold the A key for one second and until youhear a double recall frequency settings from memory, press the 5 V/M key if necessary. If in VFO mode, the LCD willdisplay VFOa or VFOb in the upper left corner of theLCD, which means you can tune the transceiverdirectly by the knobs. If you are in memory mode, M-nnn will show on the LCD in the upper left corner; nnnis the memory channel number. To select a memorychannel, rotate the SEL you are in memory mode, you may tune off theoriginal frequency by rotating the MAIN dial; the M-nnnindication will be replaced by MTUNE.

10 To get out ofMTUNE, press the V/M key: one touch of V/M returns youto the original memory channel , a second touch exitsmemory and enters you into VFO mode at the lastfrequency used in VFO memoriesRecall the memory channel you wish labeled. Press andhold the F key for one second to enter menu the SEL knob to select Menu #35 [MEM TAG].Press the SEL knob to enter the programming function,and rotate the MAIN dial to select the first character ofthe label. As each character is selected, rotate the SELknob to go to the next character.