I spent Easter Sunday sorting out my 2m and 70cm antennas. They had been plumbed into linear amplifier and masthead preamp systems. For my evaluation of the IC9700 I wanted to bypass these items. That turned out to be a little less easy than I expected.
So far I have a 9 element 2m yagi and a 23 element 70cm yagi directly connected to the shack cable frame, with the 2x44 element 23cm still to be re-connected after removing (temporarily) the masthead preamp.
Initial impressions are quite favourable. I’ve only used the rig to listen to 2m and 70cm beacons and some data signals, so far. The thing you notice is how ‘clean and clear’ the signals sound compared to several of my other rigs like the FT847 and the K3 with 2m transverter. This is something I also noted with the IC7300 on 6 and 4m.
Once I’ve sorted out the transmit parameters and installed firmware v1.06 i’ll see if I can find a few local stations to test with.
I will be posting some of my measurements on the IC9700 in due course.
I will be publishing a user review in PW, if all goes well.
Sam
I must have just missed you last Saturday Sam. :-(
ReplyDeleteI used my IC-9700 seriously last night on SSB and beacons and I concur with your findings - clear signal, easy to read. What I also noticed was that even with the filter 3 (unaltered) switched in, the noise was much reduced on a weak SSB signal and it was very readable. I don't yet have the luxury of an external speaker, so was using the internal one.
Far better than the IC-7100 and IC-910 !