Part of our Getting On The Air: Modes, Operations, and Making Contacts guide.
My current POTA setup didn’t arrive fully formed. It went through five different radios, and looking back, every swap taught me something about what I actually needed in the field versus what just sounded good on paper. Here’s the whole history, radio by radio.
Starting Point: The AnyTone AT-D578UV III Plus
I started with the AnyTone AT-D578UV III Plus, the exact same radio I run in the shack and in the Jeep today. It’s a genuinely great VHF/UHF radio. The GMRS unlock is painless, DMR is built right in, and it does more than most hams will ever ask of a UHF/VHF rig. My portable unit lived in an Armoloq cage with an Armoloq battery box, which made it an easy grab-and-go setup. The gap was obvious fast though: no HF. Great for local nets and DMR, useless the moment I wanted to work a park activation on 20 meters.
First HF Attempt: The Xiegu G90
Not long after the 578, I picked up a Xiegu G90 in its own Armoloq cage to get HF into the field kit for the first time. The G90 is a genuinely solid little QRP radio, and it did exactly what I needed at the time. But 20 watts is 20 watts, and it wasn’t long before I wanted real HF power in the field instead of QRP. I ended up selling the G90 to move to a Yaesu FT-891, mainly to gain the 100 watts the 891 offered over the G90’s 20, and because the 891 was already the exact radio I ran in the Jeep. That meant one less radio to actually learn, since I already knew its menus and quirks cold.
Settling On the Yaesu FT-891
I built the FT-891 into its own Armoloq manpack setup and carried it alongside the AnyTone 578 to activations from there. The FT-891 puts out a clean 100 watts and I have zero complaints about the actual radio performance. What I do have complaints about is the menu system, which fights you at every turn, and the total lack of an SDR waterfall. Tuning around blind on a radio this capable always felt like a step backward.
One Radio Instead of Two: The FT-857D
Carrying both the 578 and the 891 to every activation got old fast. Two radios means two power connections, two sets of cables, two things that can go wrong at a picnic table. I sold the 891 in its Armoloq cage to a friend and picked up a Yaesu FT-857D instead, which let me run HF, VHF, and UHF out of a single box. It solved the two-radio problem completely, but it inherited the FT-891’s worst trait and then some: a menu system that’s arguably even less friendly, and still no SDR or waterfall to speak of.
To be fair to both radios, the missing waterfall isn’t a dealbreaker across the board. For digital modes, where everyone operates on a small set of predetermined frequencies, you just tune to the known spot and let the software do the rest. No waterfall needed, and the 891 and 857D both handle that fine. Where it actually hurts is SSB and general hunting, scanning across a band to find activity or a specific station. Tuning around blind on both radios, one click at a time with no visual reference for where the activity actually is, got old fast and was honestly the single biggest quality-of-life gap between those two radios and anything with a real waterfall.
Tuners tell a similar story. The G90’s built-in tuner is genuinely excellent, and I still miss it. Neither the FT-891 nor the FT-857D has an internal tuner at all, so both needed an external unit bolted onto the setup to cover anything off resonance. The FTX-1 Optima flips that back in my favor with a great internal tuner of its own, and the Field Head pairs with the clip-on Yaesu FC-80, a compact 3:1 tuner that handles the mismatches I actually run into in the field.
Selling Two Radios to Buy One: The FTX-1 Optima
Eventually I decided I wanted my field radio to actually match what I run in the shack, not just cover the same bands. I sold both the FT-857D and the caged AnyTone 578, and between the two of them I more than covered the cost of a Yaesu FTX-1 Optima. That’s the radio I run in the field today, and it fixed basically everything the previous three couldn’t.
What I Gave Up Moving to the FTX-1
The FTX-1 isn’t a strict upgrade over everything it replaced. DMR is gone. The AnyTone 578 had digital voice built right in, and the FTX-1 doesn’t do DMR at all, so if I want to hop on a talkgroup I need a separate radio for that now, which is a real loss compared to the 578’s do-everything UHF/VHF feature set. And even with a MARS/CAP mod applied, the FTX-1 doesn’t gain GMRS transmit capability. The mod widens transmit range for MARS or CAP affiliated use, but GMRS is a licensed Part 95 service that requires equipment type-accepted specifically for it, and a modded ham radio was never certified for that regardless of how far the mod extends its range. I cover that distinction in more detail in What Is a MARS/CAP Mod?, but the short version is that frequency coverage and legal authorization are two different things, and the FTX-1 doesn’t close that gap any more than the radios before it did.
What I Run Today
The FTX-1 Optima gives me HF, VHF, and UHF in one radio, a real SDR waterfall, Bluetooth, GPS, and a touchscreen interface that mirrors my shack setup instead of forcing me to relearn a second menu system every time I go to the field. The built-in digital interface means I can run FT8 or any other digital mode without a Digirig or any other adapter in the chain, which is one less thing to pack and one less thing to troubleshoot at a picnic table.
The other piece that makes this setup actually work is the flexibility built into it. I can run the full 100 watt Optima base station with the SPA-1 amplifier when I want the power, or break it down to just the FTX-1 Field Head when I want light and compact. I keep multiple batteries for the Field Head along with the Yaesu FC-80 tuner, so the same core radio scales from a quick lunchtime activation to a full day out with power to spare.
What Each Stage Actually Cost
Numbers make this whole progression easier to judge honestly. Every figure below includes the radio itself plus an Armoloq cage, an Armoloq battery box, and a Digirig where the radio needed one for digital modes.
Worth calling out before the numbers: the Armoloq cage and battery box are not cheap add-ons. Figure roughly $200 for the cage and another $200 for the battery box, and in some of these builds that pair costs about as much as the radio itself. They’re not for everyone, and plenty of hams will never feel the need for either one. But if you’re actually taking a radio into the field, dropping it onto rocks or a picnic table more times than you’d like to admit, that protection buys real peace of mind, and it’s a fair chunk of why these combined totals run as high as they do.
Stage 1: AnyTone 578 + Xiegu G90
| Setup | Cost |
|---|---|
| AnyTone 578 + Armoloq cage + battery box + Digirig | ~$1,100 |
| Xiegu G90 + Armoloq cage + battery box + Digirig | ~$1,100 |
| Combined | ~$2,200 |
Stage 2: AnyTone 578 + Yaesu FT-891
| Setup | Cost |
|---|---|
| AnyTone 578 + Armoloq cage + battery box + Digirig | ~$1,100 |
| Yaesu FT-891 + Armoloq cage + battery box + Digirig | ~$1,300 |
| Combined | ~$2,400 |
Stage 3: Yaesu FT-857D Alone
| Setup | Cost |
|---|---|
| Yaesu FT-857D + Armoloq cage + battery box + Digirig (never actually caged it, included for a fair comparison) | ~$1,300 |
Stage 4: FTX-1 Field Head and Optima
| Setup | Cost |
|---|---|
| FTX-1 Field Head | ~$1,000 (10W max) |
| FTX-1 Optima (no cage, ~$150 pelican-style case in progress) | ~$1,800 |
So the FTX-1 Optima setup isn’t the cheapest option in this whole history, but it isn’t the most expensive either, and it’s substantially less than either two-radio combo I was running before. Given what it replaces and what it actually does, it’s by far the best value of the five.
The Actual Lesson
Five radios in, the lesson is a simple one. Every radio in that chain was a genuinely good radio on its own. What actually mattered was matching the field radio to how I already operate in the shack, instead of treating portable and home stations as two separate problems to solve. If you’re still working through your own POTA radio decision, my FT-891 vs FTX-1 Field vs G90 POTA comparison breaks down how these portable options actually stack up side by side.