The microphone is home brew using a Panasonic WM-53B electeret insert mounted on a goose-neck stand with 2 switches for PTT and PTT-LOCK.

As most of the parts came out of the junk box the total cost was around £14.00.

There are also 2 old receivers in the shack which are in everyday use, the Eddystone All World Two (AW-2) and the National HRO-MX, both of these receivers were the type used during the war by the voluntary interceptors, a group set up to receive German morse code messages such as Enigma and send them to Bletchley Park for decoding by Alan Turing and his team of code breakers.

My particular AW-2 was used by a lady VI in Wales, sadly I don’t know Her name or any other details about Her.

My HRO is complete with all 9 coil packs and is also fitted with an external digital readout. To do this the radio is not modified in any way, just a small co-axial cable going through one of the existing holes in the back panel, then conecting via a 100pf capacitor to the screw terminal connected to pin 1 on the VFO coil pack.

The FT-817 is supplied with the MH-31 microphone as a standard accessory. This is a dynamic microphone and has excellent audio quality but because the FT-817 dosen’t have a built in speech processor I found it had a lack of talk power when used with this radio.

My solution was to replace the dynamic insert with a Panasonic WM-53B electeret insert.

I followed the method used by George Smart M1GEO and I am very pleased with the results.

My Yaesu FT-817ND is fully loaded with the Collins SSB Filter, High Stability XTAL Oscillator, Peg Legs, Wide Band Transmit and a soft case. Unfortunately the Kranker VFO Knob is no longer available as I would have bought that as well.

I’ve really enjoyed doing some QRP work on 40 Metres and I hope to use it for some /P operation before too long.