Part of our Building Your First Ham Radio Station guide.
This is my Yaesu FT-891 manpack build: the radio sits in an Armoloq cage with an Armoloq battery box attached to the bottom for a self-contained package. On the day these photos were taken, I wasn’t running off the attached battery at all, I had the whole setup powered from a 100Ah battery box (the FDE pelican-style case in the background) instead.
The honest tradeoffs
Two things this setup doesn’t give you, and both are worth knowing going in. The FT-891 isn’t an SDR, so there’s no waterfall or spectrum scope to help you find activity at a glance. And it has no integrated antenna tuner, so whatever antenna you’re running needs to already be resonant on the band you’re working, or you need to carry a separate tuner in the pack.
Who this radio is actually good for
If you’re a POTA or SOTA operator running a resonant antenna, I genuinely don’t see another radio in this price range that competes. Full 100W output, a solid receiver, and a rugged enough build to live in a cage and get hauled around in a pack. The tuner and waterfall are real things you’re giving up, but for the specific field setups, the FT-891 earns its spot.