*Product Review* IC-7000 Transceiver
August 1, 2009 by Darren
My purchase of a new IC-7000 transceiver a few months ago was made with a view to modernizing my portable station in time for some of the DA-RC contests later in the year. Ultimately, poor propagation on 11m in the Pacific area over the southern hemisphere winter has meant that everything will need to be working at optimum level on the rare occasions when band openings do occur as we meander into Cycle 24!
In addition to ‘sexing up’ my portable station in order to cash in on DX opportunities in the upcoming summer, another reason why I splashed out on the IC-7000 transceiver is because similar rigs with a cheaper price tag required optional ‘extras’ that would no doubt see their lesser price skyrocket.
Although I bought this one especially for portable use, I decided to set it up in the shack alongside a borrowed Icom 706MKIIG before I installed it in the car. In point of fact, the IC-706 shares some likeness with the IC-7000 as far as navigating around the controls and menus go. It’s roughly the same size also and has a similar layout, though the buttons are slightly larger to aid channel flicking in the mobile which is handy while you’ve got two eyes on the road. These similarities, as well as my familiarity with the IC-706, helped BIG time when it came to exploring some of the other IC-7000 functions too!
Another reason I grabbed the IC-7000 transceiver ahead of those like the TS-480HX (which is also terrific for portable use) is because the IC-7000 is lighter at 2.3 Kg and has a smaller control head. It therefore fits into my car’s dashboard better and so will be easier to slip into the suitcase should I wish to take it on a dx adventure in the future.
Generally, from a user perspective, there isn’t much to be repulsed by with this new addition. The front panel layout seems to be well thought out and is ultra easy to use; the push buttons have a nice tactile feel; it has four concentric easy to access knobs — two of which have indents — and it has a face prettier than a high school cheerleader! The 2.5 inch colour LCD display is bright, clear, easy to read and shows tons of info. It displays power level, ALC and compression level of the speech compressor and SWR too which I found useful for tuning my antenna. It also comes with 3 attractive background colours and 2 font styles to give the rig an individual touch.
On this note, one of the more DXciting features in my eyes is the band scope which I was able to magnify using a 21 inch Dell ultra sharp external monitor from the rear video jack. The colours are tremendous and everything is super sharp, crystal clear and ultra big. The large screen makes the band scope very usable indeed.
While the internal speaker is not what I’d call too flash, the RX audio is first class if hooked up to a quality external speaker or listened to through my Sennheiser HD 280 Pro studio headphones. On this note, this radio really likes to have solid grounding as without it there was more noise than a room full of complaining YL’s. Out of the shack, proper vehicle bonding and RF grounding, in my experience, is a much underestimated aspect of mobile operations too so I’ll be sure to do a good job on this when the time comes.
Based on radio reports from local ops and a couple from DA members on small Pacific Islands, I also find the IC-7000 TX audio through its original hand held mic to be very good — despite what I’ve read about the original mic on some of the ham forums. Of course, if I was to continue using the rig as a base station though I’d give it an injection of Behringer EQ to make it punchier and give it more of a boom! But then again, I do that will all of my rigs lol.
One criticism of the IC-7000 transceiver from where I sit is that the back of the radio does get toasty after long transmissions. In fact, if you listen for long periods as I often do, you could cook an egg on there as the fan only runs when you key the mic. Having said that, the rig still doesn’t miss a beat and the warmth is pretty handy when the mercury drops below 10 in the shack. There’s a temperature gauge on the rig too and I’d guess it would cut the fan in if it got hot enough…?!?!?!?!
One of my fave features is the digital voice recorder (DVR) which enabled me to record my CQ call in 4 transmit playback memories with alphanumeric labels. This will be especially handy come the DA-RC World Contest later in the year or the Oceania Contest in early January when the throat tends to get a bit sore from continuous CQ calls. A front panel REC control also allowed me to record incoming signals for up to 25 minutes and a couple of these were added to the DA-RC site!
The IC-7000 has lots of bells and whistles in my opinion, but the main one that helped separate me from my cash a few months back was the IF-stage digital signal processing: clearly much improved over the already excellent IC-706 MkIIG. For my part the receiver is awesome and is light years ahead of something like the IC-706MKIIG. The filtering is first class and the notch filters both manual/automatic are an impressive feature. Furthermore, the noise blanker really works, as does the DSP noise reduction too. I love having the ability to adjust the filters as well!
In conclusion, this transceiver has mobile-operation written all over it and is one of the sexiest little rigs I’ve ever met. What’s more, its performance when given a thorough testing in the shack was something to tell the friends about! No doubt it will also kick ass in the field!
Radio Brand Monogamy
November 23, 2008 by Darren
Radio communications is full of hobbyists who advocate the virtues of particular radio brands; diehard DXers who’d rather cut off an arm and feed it to a Territorian crocodile then introduce another brand into the sacred confines of their radio shack.
We’ve all met blokes like them. Idiots who idolise ICOM; creeps who crave for Kenwood; Yankee-doodles who yearn for Yaesu; passionate preachers that slam products with metaphorical baseball bats which DON’T carry their fave logo on the casing…
But what for those few radio devotees who mix and match? Where does that leave the radio communications enthusiasts whose shack haven is more an amalgam of radio brand collectables; a hybrid of Yaesu, Kenwood, ICOM and others – all working in perfect harmony? What for the communications cross breeder who channels his audio through a Heil Heritage microphone wired to an Alinco transceiver, then to a Kenwood antenna tuner, running to a DOSS SPS-8400 power supply? Where and how does HE fit into the mix?
We ‘bastards of the airways’ can’t help but feel a little chastised when DX geeks start sermonizing the specs of their favourite brand and condemning those of us who prefer not to step up onto the soap box and join the choir of trademark monogamy. Those same anti-polygamous product pushers might say we’re wedged in an identity crisis of sorts… Or worse still, climb on board the XYL nag train and call us ‘indecisive’. Well to hell with them, I reckon!
I can assure you that sitting on the DX fence when it comes to choosing a radio brand as the ultimate of ultimates in our PENTULTIMATE hobby is a perilous pursuit – especially when hobby comrades line you up as an easy target and start hammering away on the ideology of ICOM or the uniqueness of Uniden or the appeal of Alinco… These make for some serious splinters in the backside, let me tell you.
So, where do YOU sit in the world of product purchase? Are you a dedicated one brand man – loyal to the very end? Or are you a mix and matcher; a concocter of communications commodities whose shack can be described as a ‘fusion of the best from the best’?
Something to think about anyway!
73 de Darren
Icom R1500 Review
November 6, 2008 by Darren
Specifications
The Icom IC-R1500 remote head/PC control DC – daylight receiver is one of four models currently available from Icom, a well known and much respected electronics manufacturer in Japan. Many amateur radio operators swear by Icom gear and my previous experience with Icom equipment has included the R5 and R20 handheld scanners, the V82 amateur 2m handheld and IC-P7A 2/70 mini handheld as well as the monster R8500 wideband receiver.
All of my previous experiences with Icom have been very enjoyable and about the only thing I can say is that their gear is very different from your average Uniden or Radio Shack scanner and so if your use to that sort of equipment then be prepared for a fairly steep learning curve with the R1500.
The R1500 has some very impressive specs/features, some of these include:
- 10 kHz-3300MHz range
- 2600 channels per file (1000 w/R1500)
- Scan rate of 60 channels per second
- 10, 20, 50, 100, 500Hz; 1, 2.5, 5, 6.25, 8.33, 9, 10, 12.5, 15, 20, 25, 30, 50, 100, 125, 150, 200, 500 kHz; 1MHz steps
- AM, WFM, FM, LSB, USB and CW
- CTCSS/DCS decode
- Multi-channel monitor
- Recording operation
- Band scope
- Signal meter
- Attenuator
- Narrow/wide filters
- Noise blanker (NB)
- Automatic notch filter (ANF) (optional)
- Noise Reduction (NR) (optional)
- Voice squelch control (VSC)
- AFC
- AGC
- Priority watch
- Auto store
- Frequency offset (duplex feature)
- 6-character alpha-tag (On remote head)
- 50 search limits
- Import / export CSV files
What you get out of the box…
* Icom R 1500 unit – this is quite large but lighter then what it looks, and seems to be very well built. It has the following connections:
- BNC aerial connection
- Ground Connection
- 12V DC in PACKET connection
- Remote controller
- USB Connection
- External Speaker
* 12 V DC power supply – this is quite small and seems to work fine.
* USB Cable – this is quite short and Icom don’t recommend the use of other USB cables, I have tested it with a good quality 20M USB cable and it still seemed to work ok. This might be a good option for somebody who wants to mount the R1500 unit away from the computer and use a shorter coax cable for less signal loss, maybe in a roof or somewhere like that.
* Test aerial – This is a telescopic whip on with a base that has double sided tape and a few meters of coax, I used it for a while and seemed to work ok but you really need to use an external aerial to get the most from it.
* Software / driver CD – This has the drivers and the Icom software. The software in general is good but a few of the features seem to not quite work as they should, the scope feature seems to cause the radio to drop its audio and the record feature does not work at all, if these are issues with the software or I have not got them setup right I don’t know.
* Remote Head – To me this is the best thing about the radio and works very well with it. Not all the features that you can use via the PC are supported on the remote head but there are enough to keep you busy for quite a while.
PC Use
The first step to getting the R1500 working with a PC is to install the software and driver that comes on the enclosed CD, this is a simple process for anybody who has ever installed software before and only takes a couple of seconds to install.
When you connect up the R1500 to the computer (in my case a laptop) using the USB cable you are asked which port it is on, once you set this you are away and can explore the software and the many features it offer.
The R1500 software seems to work very well and has a lot of features.
I have programmed in the 360 channels I normally have in all my radios, one thing is that Icom have finally got the software right this time as far as programming goes, you can now import/export your files in CSV format so it is a simple copy / paste job, unlike the software for the R20 which you had to manually type in everything.
Each bank can have 99 channels but you can finally have multi-bank scanning which makes it great for people like me with heaps of channels they want to scan.
My normal test of scanning my 360 VHF / UHF channels has shown that not a single channel has had any issues at all with lockups or rubbish from my laptop getting on to the radio, if only I could say the same for my 396T which has quite a few issues when used near my laptop, especially in the UHF band between 470MHz and 490MHz.
I have also run a search of the following ranges to see if I get any problems with lock ups, here’s the results using the internal test aerial.
- 70MHz – 86MHz – 3
- 118MHz – 136MHz – 1
- 144MHz – 174MHz – 3
- 406MHz – 512MHz – 14
As you can see above it does lock up on some channels, thankfully none of them carry traffic I want to listen to so I am not fussed about it. The UHF channels above where it locked up were around the 408 MHz area and the 470-490 MHz area.
One of the best features I have found is the 25 channel multi mode monitor; basically it allows you to program 25 channels and watch on the screen as they become active, you then simply click on the active channel and you hear the audio, I think I am going to get a heap of use out of this feature, I was using it last night for a while and it was really good to be able to see what channels were active and simply click on them and hear the audio.
I tried a little bit of HF using the laptop to control it but I was getting too much RFI from my laptop to make it worth listening.
Remote Head Use
The remote head works very well and that’s how I use it most of the time, as it has a 3.5m cord so I can leave the main body of the R1500 beside my bed and just move the head around depending on where I am sitting.
Setting up the R1500 in my car, which required the purchase of a $20 cable to power it and taking it to a hill top in Launceston really showed what a versatile receiver this is.
I setup at Free Landers lookout in Riverside. I decided on that spot as it is line of sight to Mt Barrow, Abel’s Hill, West Launceston and the FM station in riverside so it is a fairly tough spot for radios, my 396T performs worse up there then even on the top of Mt Barrow with all the high power stuff a only
few hundred meters away.
Running my first test of scanning my 360 VHF / UHF channels I have programmed in to the R1500 with the mobile aerial didn’t show any where near as many problems as I was expecting or what the 396T has up there with even it’s normal aerial let along on the external one. I only found 4 channels with problems and they were not any ones I really listen to that much.
Searching each of the following bands with the mobile aerial showed the following:
- 70-86MHz – 5 channels with broadcast band audio/lock ups
- 118-136MHz – 0 problems (VERY surprising)
- 144-174MHz – 4 channels with mainly 7NT (91.7MHz) audio
- 406-450MHz – 12 channels, mostly between 411-414 with TV audio
- 462-512MHz – 14 channels with TV audio, around 488MHz, 497MHz and
503MHz - 865-870MHz – 9 EDACS control channels and 6 channels with broadcast audio between 867.8 and 868.5625MHz
So overall it seems to work quite well and I am very happy with it. I also had a bit of a listen to HF with about 20m of wire hanging between my car and a tree up there and it seemed to work ok, I did notice some broadcast band signals between 2MHz and 30Mhz but I guess given where I was that is not really unexpected.
I have been using it at home this afternoon and running it side by side with the 396T scanning the same VHF / UHF channels (no trunking) shows it’s scan speed is around 40 channels a second and that I am picking up so much more then the 396T does.
Good Points
- Remote head is great and works really well
- Wide Band coverage
- Fast scan / search speed (around 40-50 steps/channels per second)
- Bank linking actually works
- AFC (see how far off people radios are on UHF CB)
- Voice Scan – Gets rid of the annoying EDACS beeps and is set per channel
- 50 search banks
- Many other things I have not even tried yet
- Great Audio
- Multi-channel monitor (see 25 channels at once)
Bad Points
- Has some small issues with broadcast audio (AM and FM bands) on other channels
- Only 6 character alpha tags on remote heads
- Manually adding a channel on the remote head is easy once you have done it a few time but is very slow
Overall Comments
This radio was purchased as my do it all radio and has to last me a few years so I was looking for the best radio that I could afford, I think I have found it.
One strange thing I have noticed is that you have two totally different sets of memory, one when you are using a pc / laptop to control it and another when using the remote head, when using the different control methods you can only access the memory for that mode, this means you have to keep two different memory sets updated with information if you want to change info or add new stuff.
When you connect up the USB cable you can read / write the “internal” memory that is used with the remote head and make changes but you can’t scan the channels, only the ones in the pc / laptop file.
So over all I am quite happy with it. Icom seem to have taken the best features of the r8500 and the R20 and put them all together in to this package. The software works very well and I can’t find anything I don’t like about it so far, it is full of options and it will take me quite a while to come to terms with it all.
Sure it is not quite to the same level as an AOR 5000 type radio (but it is close) and some people might not like the idea of having a radio that needs a pc to use some of the features but to do most things you can use the remote head. I really do think that I have finally found a radio that suits my needs. The VHF /UHF performance is great for my needs and is better then my Uniden 396T.
I have not had much of a chance to use HF on it yet but having a bit of a listen to some HF channels this morning has shown it is capable of picking them up fairly well, 8867KHz and 5643KHz are two I have been getting very well.
Over all I am very impressed with it and it will be my main rig for quite a long time, at least until the R3000 comes out…
Review written by Paul, June 2007
www.scaningtasmania.org
www.geocities.com/paulgblundell
Welcome 43DA007 Michael
October 30, 2008 by Darren
The Dx Adventure Radio Club is pleased to announce its latest member from Australia, 43DA007 Michael. Formerly 43SP001, 43SP391 and 43RC006, Mike brings with him to DA-RC ranks immense experience and DX chasing capability. One of the few Australian Freeband DXers with over 250 DXCC worked and confirmed, 43DA007 has also performed some Special Event Station (SES) activity with his previous DX Group and is eager to compliment his new Club with the same skill set when the prospect arises.
A past runner up in the Oceania Contest behind 172AT101 Philippe and a participant in his own country’s Mountain Radio Challenge (MRC) which involves Summits On The Air (SOTA) type activity, Michael is one of the Pacific’s most committed contesters with a competitive spirit unsurpassed. It’s not surprising then that DA-RC’s various contest event structures, as well as its innovative Achievement Program with countless awards, have captured this Icom man’s imagination as we move into the exciting times of Cycle 24!
As is expected of all DA-RC members, Mike’s competitive nature balances well with high-level professionalism and a genuine knock-about friendly nature that sees him as one of the most well-liked and well-known DX enthusiasts in 43 Division.
Outside of 27 MHz radio communications and an infatuation with quad antennas, Michael’s hobbies and interests include estuary, beach and freshwater fishing, shooting and hunting in some of Victoria’s remote country bushland areas. His love of the outdoors and of adventure also stands him in good stead for continuation of a distinguished career in the Defence Force.
On behalf of the DA-RC team, welcome to the Club 43DA007 Michael. We look forward to involving you in Team DA-RC DXpedition initiatives in the near future.
ICOM IC-703
September 21, 2008 by Darren
Many 11m DXers believe that both QRP operating and QRP contests will be the new craze when Cycle 24 eventually kicks in. For those of you who’ve been living with their head shoved in a hay stack, the term QRP refers to operating at extremely low power of about 10 watts and is rather attractive in DX circles due to the challenges it poses in terms of workability.
A while ago I purchased an ICOM IC-703 on eBay for a bargain price especially for this purpose, but also to use on the legal band allocation (26.965 – 27.405 MHz) which is just about to take off incidentally with CB Club action! As you can see, this radio looks just like the IC-706 but it only puts out a maximum of 10 watts!
So why would I want this one when I’ve got the TS2000 already on the shack bench? Well, like I said before, I like the concept of QRP, this radio is made for it as it requires no further adjustments like tuning into the menu and turning down the power and, of course, the price was darned good, lol!
Although I’ve only had this rig for a short while, I can already say that the IC-703 is a beaut little radio with a terrific receiver. At just two kilograms, it is most definitely not an IC-706MkIIG with a 10W PA as some people assume and has its own unique characteristics. The receiver for instance, which is completely redesigned, has a much quieter front end. It’s extremely sensitive and the RX audio quality is excellent for SSB. You can definitely pull out the weak ones with this radio as I’m finding out by comparing reports with other ops in the local area.
The DSP noise reduction and auto notch are effective also. You do lose a little off the high end in the audio response, particularly if you set the noise reduction level above a 5. Still, the audio is not fatiguing and it’s better than having lots of noise as I’m sure you would agree. Like most rigs I’ve used, the noise blanker works but is not spectacular. I really don’t know why they bother with them in the first place…
Surprisingly, the internal antenna tuner works far better than I would have expected and just as well as my Pro 2 antenna tuner does. It certainly tunes a wider range than specified by ICOM!
On the TX side of things, audio reports from some of the local ops are quite good as well using just the standard ICOM microphone with its connector 8-pin modular jack. The optional BP-228 battery I’ve been using is fairly small and light but it will run the radio at a solid 5W out for a reasonable period of time.
Having previously owned the idiosyncratic Yaesu FT-100, I was well prepared for navigating the menus of the IC-703 and, for a technical idiot, I actually found the Menus and Operation Guide very easy to get my head around. The front panel is simple to understand, even with the menu system power consumption on low, but it would’ve been tops to have had a built in clock. You can’t have everything though or you’d be getting up in size and price and that would defeat the purpose of the radio in the first place.
My choice of power supply was of all things the PS/Speaker made to match the 10m Emperor TS-5010. The colour scheme matched perfectly and the 703 sits snugly on top of it.
With USB, LSB, CW, RTTY, AM and FM modes, the IC-703 seems to be well built and it’s a really cool rig to own, but there are a few things that do not appeal. Firstly, the connector for the DC PS seemed a bit iffy so we’ll have to see how it holds up. Secondly, I wasn’t keen on the microphone connection at the bottom of the rig. If this is the way they want it, they should have made the ‘Feet’ a fraction taller so that the microphone connector didn’t bind so much. When I use the headphones also, it is very difficult to use the IF-SHIFT knob.
My overall feeling is that the IC-703 is very versatile and very functional for QRP operating. As fas I’m concerned, performance is better than any other radio this small – or that I have used anyway. Power consumption, too, is very reasonable for such a feature rich radio (3A max for 10W out, 2A @ 9/6V for 5W out with the BP-228).
73 de Darren, 43DA001/010 Headquarters Team