The FT897 is the ultimate radio for use in the field, in fact it's designed for this use. Inside the radio there is place for special made batteries, witch transform the radio into a portable rig. In the same space you can also put a specially designed powersuply. Also you can use an external battery or powersuply.
The FT897 has the same specifications as the FT847 and FT857. In the development of the rig is support of digital modes taken of. The operation of the rig takes some time to get use to, mainly through the multifunction keys A,B and C. If you have got the hang of the use of those key's , it's an easy to operate radio. Frequently i use the DSP, IF shift and Attenator (-10 Db), specially on the busy band like 40 Meter, for filtering out the weak signals.
Yaesu has considered the use of extra filters for use on SSB (2,3 Khz) and CW (500 Hz). These filters DO NOT contribute to an better reception, in comparison to use of DSP, IF shift and Attenator. A better SSB filter is the Inrad 720F (2.0 Khz) filter. A comparison between the both SSB filters you can read here
Most amateurs are using an external tuner to match their antenna's . Yaesu thought about that and came with a additional automatic tuner called the FC30. This tuner works well if you are using resonant antenna's with a ratio of 1:1.8. Above that the tuner will not work. An better alternative is the LDG tuner AT897. This tuner has the same dimensions as the FC30, with the difference that it tunes antenna's with a ratio 1:10. Additional there is an extra CAT socket made on the tuner so U can use both CAT AND auto tuning. This is not possible on the FC30
Now we are talking about CAT control, I use the excellent program HamRadio Deluxe from HB9DRV. The functionality of this program is enormous. More about this program you can find here.
If you want to use CAT control on this radio you must have a connection between the radio and a computer. For that purpose U can find a CAT socket on the radio. Yaesu has made a special cable for this purpose called CT62. This is an expensive cable to buy, just like the audio cable (CT39A) U need to put through the audio to the computer. These cables are easy to make, but the building of those two cables are a bit larger than the Yaesu cables due to the used parts. Within the CT62 cable there is a miniature MAX232 built in and that is a bit hard to work with. You can build the two cables in a small box, using conventional parts. In this way you can build your own interface with audio and RS232 throughput to your computer. How this is done you can find out here