Ordered a new Collins 500hz filter for my FT-817 from W4RT, and installed it (really simple, remove some screws, disconnect speaker, plug in the module in the obvious place, reconnect speaker and screws and you are done). It really does help with cw and digital. As an example, this morning I tuned down around 7.039 to listen to the K and M letter beacons, and recorded 15 seconds first without the filter, and second with it. While the signals are clearly legible in both, it’s certainly less tiring than listening without it.

Here\’s the MP3.

And the resulting spectrogram. Note, you can see a QSO going on above the signals here, which is totally removed when the filter kicks in.