Icom IC-706MKIIG Arrival

 Well it arrived. And it works

 

 

Out of the box and tidy enough. Need a little bit of a polish, but generally good to go. 

A local having a chat on 40m. Using the radial-less vertical - it's giving me less noise than the 40m dipole. 

Listening in on a local VHF net in the evening yielded a positive result; it received well, and it was easy enough to get to the XFC button to listen on reverse. Recent changes to the repeater moving it back to a vertical antenna seem to be working OK. 

Discoveries:

I'd read that it'd be necessary to set the power in HF and V/UHF. Actually, I've needed to set the power in HF, 6m, VHF and UHF. And well, that's easier said than done..

I have a power meter for V/UHF, so that was easy enough. 

In FM, it can do from 2-50w in 2m, and 2-20W in 70cm, so the scale it has of 1-9 (then H) doesn't seem to relate to much in terms of actual wattage. In AM mode (Note to self.. hold Mode for 2 seconds), the power ranges are 2-20w on 2m, 2-8w on 70cm. 

6m is a problem; I'm not allowed to transmit on it with my current license, so I couldn't actually test the power to set it if I had the gear. Power rating is 5-100w in SSB/FM at 50MHz.

HF: Given the power rating of 5-100w for SSB/CW/FM/RTTY, I suspect I won't be getting past about 2 on the RF power dial. I don't have a power meter for HF.. yet. The tuner that is coming looks like it has a power meter, so possibly that might let me get a clue. Or I may need to borrow one to get a baseline. This one is a bit of a learning experience; the Xiegu G90 sets the RF output in watts. Not a random scale based upon a range of different power outputs depending on how the wind blows. 

I love the VFO dial. It spins so easily, yet so quickly. Much easier to move rapidly compared to the G90. It also has a tension lever on the side to tension it up. 

I'd read about a quirk these would have of carrying a split if you changed the VFO after having been on a memory channel.. Annoying. Will need to learn to watch that. 

The basic controls are pretty straight forward. It's the longest I've had a radio and not hooked it up to the computer for programming - mostly because this one won't really program its memory that way. I managed to program names for the memories easily enough (note to self - Display - G - G4 will show memory names).

The inbuilt SWR meter is no good to me - the doco indicates it must be used over 30w.

Possibly this is the longest I've read a manual for anything, with the G90 coming a close second. That said, when I read it, I don't find myself swearing at it wondering why an option is buried somewhere. It's fairly usable. The G90 however has been the bane of my existence when looking for anything quickly. 

Overall, I'm generally happy with this radio, given it's 20 years old. It come in pretty clean with minor wear and tear and a disclosed minor scratch on the screen that I can't even see during regular operation. It needs a bit of a polish up to get some minor dust out of the top cover and around the edges, but nothing major. 

I had hoped that I might score some filters in it; a quick look indicates this is not the case. I'll need to keep a look out and see what pops up. 

The power lead is annoyingly short. I'll need to extend that. I've ordered some Anderson plugs, and should have enough spare to be able to make an extension cable.

There was a minor disappointment though:

This will require some tidy up. Can't say I'm a fan....

 I also ordered the WARS Anderson Powerpole Box kit last night:

 

See here: http://vk2bv.org/home/projects/powerpole-distribution-box/ 

I'm looking forward to putting this together. At the moment I have a bastardised Clipsal blank plate with a couple of banana plug sockets attached - 2 x12v feeds and an earth. It started out serviceable enough, but as I've added more gear it's just become useless, and the banana plug sockets are woefully cheap and lightweight. 

I'll ditch the plate and mount this over the top. The earth I'll pull through and connect to a chunk of copper rod that I can use to attach gear to directly. Not entirely sure how i'll set that up just yet, but it's a project that will involve a trip to Bunnings. I'll need a trip soon anyway to buy some concrete for the flag poles.

 

I've been meaning to buy one for a while, and really couldn't afford it at the moment, but my current method is sub-par and I'm not sure how it'd cope with much TX, especially once the G90 is doing FT8 whilst I'm trying to use the IC706.

The most annoying things left to deal with are the RFI around me, waiting on the tuner, flag poles and new dipole kit. Maybe then I'll get to a point where HF is reasonably usable. I'll probably wind up ordering a power meter as well.......