Ah ok, thanks Mark.
I’ll wait until I have a load in.
Ref the green wire, I have one. 
Steve, if you plan on snipping a green wire I think the battery tray side of the connectors is the better spot. Worst case would be a new tray if you wanted to get it back to factory-fresh condition. The rig side of the cable is soldered to the board. You can always charge NiMH externally anyway.
Be mindful of the antenna match presuming you have the pre-ND finals. Or before long you will be fitting the ND finals!
I’ll probably not touch the inside of the battery compartment in reality. I will use my external batteries.
That’s great about your old boss now being a friend! I also have one of those (who shall remain nameless - let’s just say he rarely uses a microphone and lives near Scarborough)…
All the best for your “binge activating” in early August. I’m also one who is more likely to binge activate these days in the hunt for unique / complete summits. The SOTA MT should have never introduced the SOTA Complete Award - they’ve cost me a fortune in travel costs and hotel bills… They should get a handout from the tourist boards of various countries as a sort of commission to help pay for running SOTA!
I think I read you have an FT-897 as well? Like many of us then if that is so you have the 817 for the arduous summits and the 897 for easier short haul summits. Excellent.
What’s the name by the way?
73 Phil G4OBK
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Yes Phil I also have an 897D, but also I am doing some activating with G1YFC and he has an 857 so we will save some weight there.
Name is Steve.
I always use the external battery as you get the higher output power of 5 watts. I used to use a SLAB but now have 4.1Ah LiFePO4
73 Glyn
You can run at 5 watts from internal batteries - you just have to select it as the rig defaults to 2.5w when running from internals.
Indeed, it makes me laugh that people still think an FT817 can’t produce 5w unless it’s powered from 13.8v!
There’s actually a recent article in RadCom that explains some complex scheme using a switch mode power supply so that his FT817 will run at 5 watts from an already more than sufficient supply. Lol! A few simple button presses is all that’s needed!
Colin
Indeed. I also don’t get the concern that 5w might not be enough. When you’re the DX, plus sited high up with good take off in a low noise environment, 5w is effectively QRO. In fact I have sometimes dropped right down to 500mW and still the Q5 reports come back.
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