Category: Rigs

All posts that are about rigs, radio’s and Handy Talkies.

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ICOM IC-7300I follow the news about Icom’s new rig: the IC-7300 closely. Actually I’m more a Kenwood lover but there is something with the IC-7300 that I love. It’s predecessor (IC-7200) also is a interesting radio, especially for portable use (holidays etc.). My friend PH4M bought an IC-7200 a few years ago and loves it. I got the change to play with it from time to time and I start to grow a little love for Icom. But I didn’t see much use for an IC-7200 in my current shack.
Back to the IC-7300. In a certain way it’s a revolutionary radio, it’s the first of the big three (Icom, Kenwood & Yaesu) which comes with a complete digital sampled RF-path (aka SDR). Sure, it’s not the first amateur SDR-rig. We know FlexRadio has SDR’s for years now and even Elecraft has it’s KX3. But Icom is the first of the big three to come out with a fully SDR-capable rig.

I kinda like the idea of SDR. It makes the device very flexible because future updates can be feed in as software and you don’t need to do much upgrades of the hardware. And if the software (and processor) is fast enough, it will beat good old hardware in performance. Downside of most SDR’s in my opinion is the “new” look & feel of the rig itself. I don’t want a button-less box on my desk and do all the operating from my PC. I don’t like the thin display from Elecraft either. I still want my SDR-rig to be a good old box with button’s on it, but a little smaller then regular rigs. It’s cool to be able to operate the rig via PC if I want to, but not necessarily.
ICOM seems to understands this completely and build the IC-7300! I’m very curious how the rig will operate. From the various reports I found on You-tube, I got a first impression. At a price of around a 1000 euro’s it is a very interesting rig to expand my shack with. I don’t want to get rid of my beloved Kenwood TS-590 for it, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a IC-7300 next to it… According to some sources, the IC-7300 will be available in The Netherlands in January 2016 (it’s already available in Japan).
So I created a money-box to put in savings. I already have saved 100 euro’s. I figured it will take me a year to get the money for this rig. In the meantime I will follow the news closely and if someone buys a IC-7300 I hope I will be able to spend some time operate one.

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second TM-D710After I bought my first Kenwood TM-D710 in 2012 I discovered this was the ideal rig for me, mobile as well as stationary. I use it primarily in the shack and took it with me in the car when went mobile. I figured it would be convenient to have a second TM-D710 main-unit in the car, then I only have switch the front panel between shack and car. In order to help me trace a second TM-D710 unit, I set a Google Alert on Kenwood TM-D710.
Forget totally about this alert until a few weeks ago I received a mail there was a new entry for my search term. I clicked it and it was an ad on a local sales site. After a short bid I got a message from it’s previous owner Rudy PD1RVM. So a long story short: a few days later my second TM-D710 arrived. It was still in it’s original box and in mint condition. After some short tests the rig seems fine and I had to determine which one to put in the car and which one stays in the shack.
I did some modifications (adding GPS to the display-unit, swapping the noisy fan of the main-unit). After some thinking I decided to use my old front-panel (with GPS-module) and the main-unit from the second TM-D710(with slightly more noisy fan) in the car. The front-panel of the second TM-D710 went to my old main-unit in the shack. No sooner said then done I tested the config in the car. Worked excellent!
But when testing the setup in the shack, it fails to connect to my weather station. That’s weird! Tried different things but nothing helps. I suspected the GPS-port on the front-panel of the second TM-D710. It had to do something to do with the port. Finally I took apart the front-panel from my old radio, connected the GPS-module to the standard Kenwood wire and connected it to the new front-panel. Indeed, also nothing.
Next step: take apart the new panel and find something blackened. But to my total surprise it wasn’t broke; there was a beautiful build in GPS-module as well! That explains a lot, when there is a GPS-module in it, the serial port is occupied from the inside. I’m never able to see any device I connect from the outside.
Tested the new front-panel in the car to see which GPS-module performed better. No doubt about it: it’s the one in the second TM-D710! It has a fix within 2 second where I had to wait at least a minute for my old GPS-module to get a fix.
Disassembled the GPS-module from my old front-panel and connected the weather-station again. Now it plays immediately.

Now I’m a proud owner of two TM-D710’s. One for mobile and one for my shack.

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Kenwood TH-D72Since early 2012 I do my daily commute by bike. It’s a 18 kilometers (11 miles) one way so I have a little 50 minutes to kill per ride. Mischa PA1OKZ, manager of the local repeater PI2NOS started an experiment earlier this year connecting more then one receiver to the repeater. The second receiver is located nearby my destination (work). When I read about this I figured if I take my hand-held, maybe I could work PI2NOS the whole ride! So time to dust of my Baofeng UV-B5 and take it with me for my daily commute. It turns out to work splendid! My Baofeng itself isn’t suitable for everyday use. It’s battery hold out for only one ride. The battery lips on the back seem to hold current, it tickles in my sweaty hands. And the most annoying: the transmit-button is small and is hard to hold when biking.
It seems I have to search for a better hand-held, probably non-Chinese. I’m a bit of a Kenwood-fanboy (I just really really really like their products), I start looking for a hand-held from Kenwood. Their flagship is the TH-D72. A dual band for 2m and 70cm and is also APRS- and GPS-enabled due to the build in TNC. The price is quite hefty (around 475 euro’s) but if for daily use I probably shouldn’t scrimp on quality. I try to do my hobby budget-neutral so I had to sell something before I buy something new. For this amount of money I had to sell half my shack. Biggest item to sell was my beloved Kenwood PS-53 power supply. When the amount was reached I send out an email to my favorite store: HAM-shop from Marcus PA2DB. Two weeks later my package arrived! I use my new Kenwood-relative TH-D72 everyday. It is a great piece of ingenuity! I still have to find a good spot to put the hand-held when biking. When it is dry weather I click it on the sling of my backpack (on top of my shoulder). But when it rains I put it in my backpack. Then it’s harder to work the repeater on low power. APRS and GPS work great but they also suck a lot of battery power. When put on both and running high power (5 watts) the battery only last two rides (back and forth). So I’m still experimenting with settings to enjoy the longest battery-life and put on the most options.