Old Yaesu's

Flicking back through amateur radio publications of the time (circa 1981) the FT707 typically retailed for £569 which to be honest compares favourably with the FT857 now (particularly if you take into account 27 years of inflation). Reviews of the rig at the time varied but generally it was felt to be a good quality mobile radio but unsurprisingly better suited to mobile use than as a base station. In retrospect the rig has built up quite a following being reliable, powerful (100w PEP on SSB) and with its classic looks still ‘cuts the mustard’ in my view. There was also a range of matched accessories for the unit including the choice of dedicated low or high output power supplies with integral speaker, antenna matcher and an external memory VFO.

Yaesu launched two versions of the radio, the low power (<10w) FT707S which lacked the rear mounted heat sink and cooling fan, and the high power (<100w) FT707. The rig covered the amateur frequencies from 80m up to 10m (including the WARC bands on 10MHz, 18MHz and 24MHz) on AM, CW wide, CW narrow, USB and LSB (all switchable – no memory channels or automatic defaults or menus here!). A gripe when new was the lack of top band (1.8MHz) but amateurs are resourceful types and there is a very clever modification by G3TSO which can be found on the internet to install the band if you feel brave enough.

The rig in use is a pleasure to operate, this really is radio!! There is a chunky and very smooth to operate VFO knob controlling both a graduated scale and a digital display calibrated down to 0.1kHz, there is a switchable clarifier control and IF width control (very useful for tuning out QRM on difficult to hear stations), there is also VOX operation.

The receiver is amazingly sensitive, even more so than my much newer FT747 and the RF gain on a radio like this really comes into its own to attenuate strong signals as well as to minimise interference from adjacent frequencies. With careful juggling between the clarifier, IF width and RF gain its amazing just how much you can clean up reception on a crowded band – bear in mind this was produced 20 years before DSP and it still holds its own so to speak!

For an old radio there is not too much to really criticise. There is a tendency for the frequency to drift 2-3kHz HF until things have warmed up (about half hour) which may be old components but interestingly a 1981 review in QST reported exactly the same occurence so its probably inherent with the rig.

The coloured LED bar for S meter/Power meter/ALC meter has had criticism over the years but as with anything once you get used to it its fine AND it seems to work progressively which cannot be said for all radios, some of them much newer!! Things to bear in mind include the Yaesu 4 pin power plug can fail (see Marketplace ‘wants’ !!) and with a modern Heil headset the AF output from the headphone socket is rather low and can distort when turned up.

FT707’s crop up from time to time on good old ebay as well as at radio rallies, a lot were produced so finding a good one should not be too difficult and the rule of thumb seems to be that values for a well sorted and cared for radio that has not been abused or badly (or illegally) modified tend to be in the £100 - £120 region.

Illegal modifications? Yes, the radio came out at the time of the early 80’s CB boom and found favour with 11m SSB operators, it was the natural next step from a Cobra or a NATO ‘sidebander’ I suppose with quite a few having the 10m frequency crystals being replaced with 11m or 26-27MHz crystals. Indeed my first experience of the unit was just such an operator who had a six foot ‘Moonraker’ on the roof of his mk2 Escort and a modified FT707 on the passenger seat!! I suppose perhaps the memories of the thing being used to work far off places whilst hiding out in field gateways has helped generate part of my own perception and the mystique for the thing but there is so much more to it than that. The rigs capabilities offer so much more than one band too high in the HF spectrum to be interesting for most of the eleven year cycle and its capabilities are such that once I had found a good one it became a permanent and most used fixture in my own shack.

The personal logbook contains contacts made mostly using the FT707 and whilst the thought of trading for something newer with more toys and gadgets has appealed from time to time it is still there and in use and there are no plans to part with it. I’ll never sell it and if it should die then the replacement will in all probability be another one just the same!!

POSTSCRIPT

Well during 2013/14 the Yaesu gave up, being deaf, not locking frequency and not transmitting and was left in a box for some time. Eventually I was lucky enough to get some help from Jersey amateur Syd GJ0JSY who was kind enough to take a look and spent a significant amount of time investigating, repairing and fettling and mid/late 2015 announced all was now working if I wanted to call by and collect it! Syd is a gent and doesn't even charge for repairs so a couple of decent bottles of wine seemed a more than fair trade for his time! There's no way of knowing how long the old radio will keep working but I am ever hopeful so we shall just have to see!

Yaesu were not the first to bring out a ‘proper’ VHF rig as a portable but in the 290 they introduced one of the most capable (having full repeater split, SSB and CW) in a unit small enough to carry about and run off internal batteries (8 ‘C’ cell alkaline or Ni-Cad or the like) whilst also providing the options of a mobile mounting bracket, matching linear amplifier (boosting power from 2.5watts to a thumping great 10 watts) as well as subsequently introducing models for 6 metres and 70cms.

The output being ‘only’ 10 watts on both FM and SSB is quite sufficient for most purposes particularly when connected to a good antenna (and the ideal level for driving a linear amplifier) and the front end is reasonably selective and quite sensitive for the majority of instances. Co-channel interference is negligible, even when connected to a decent gain beam antenna though it is doubtful an urban environment would be so kind to the receivers front end. The display has a nice clear LED frequency display down to 100Hz and a LED bar graph meter which is pretty to look at but otherwise fairly unhelpful in giving signal reports being pretty much S9+ or nothing very much! But then, we should by now be able to give a realistic RS report based on an experienced ear shouldn’t we? (Ed. See editorial)

The radio is designed for FM repeater use as well as SSB having a microphone optimised for SSB use but still delivers reportedly good audio on FM, a clarifier switch allowing SSB and CW fine tuning via the main VFO knob and dual VFO’s but only transmitting on one of these, the other for receive being designed for split frequency operation. There is no CTCSS for repeater activation due to the age of the radio but there is a 1750Hz tone burst with auto tone burst which will still, even nowadays, activate a good many of the UK based repeaters. Tuning steps are switchable at FM between 1, 12.5 and 25 kHz and at SSB/CW between 0.01, 0.1 and 1 kHz. Rapid QSY at SSB is simpler by switching to FM to allow the bigger channel steps to be utilised.

Results with the FT480r have always been good even with relatively low power. The radio was mounted in a car for more than three years and never missed a beat, even for an old timer, eventually being replaced by a much newer dual bander but regrettably without sideband. Mobile VHF SSB is from most peoples experience it seems a non-starter though with the need for horizontal polarisation and decent amounts of gain and directivity on the antenna to be essential if trying to talk to anyone other than locals. A recent overhaul and service to make sure the rig was on frequency and to ensure optimum output has boosted the output on SSB to a hefting 12 watts PEP and given the radio a new lease of life but now as a base station radio hooked up to a decent crossed ZL beam antenna for both FM and SSB.

Reviews of the time weren’t outstanding, presumably due to the nature of other high quality rivals, some examples were reported to have suffered problems, nature unspecified but the accepted wisdom seems to be that if one has survived this long then it’s a good’un!! This is borne out it seems by the number that appear from time to time on the secondhand market and in good condition and still holding their value well.

For the anoraks amongst us there is metal ‘docking station’ specifically for the FT480r which can hold two rigs and giving the option to run these to separate antennae, power units and switching to a main desk microphone common for both rigs allowing the use of the FT480r with one of its sister and visually identical rigs, the FT780r for 70cms or the FT680r for 6 metres. Examples of the FT780r are still reasonably plentiful on the secondhand market but the FT680r is as rare as the proverbial hens teeth, I was told a few weeks after buying my 480r that there was a 680r at the same rally and it was snapped up…, almost for the same price, such is life!

If all of this leaves you tempted to at least have a test drive of such a radio you won’t need to look too far, the JARS are proud owners of a (slightly dusty) good working order FT480r in the radio shack (with the matching Yaesu power supply) connected to the VHF multi band vertical and regularly has made contacts well into the UK via the repeater network.