Looking for opionions about Icom IC-740

[dj2fl]

Hello,

i'm looking for opinions about the old Icom IC-740. I just saw an old advertisement, and like the Features it has. But it seems that it wasn't sold very long or much, because it's hard to find at the used market in germany. So there are two options: Wether ist's so goot that nobody wants to sell it, or it's so bad that anybody has ever even bought one. So I would like to hear your opinion it is worth loogking for one. At the moment i use FT-757GX

Thank you and 73'

Frank

[WB2WIK]

The IC-740 actually worked very well. I owned two of these, and used one exclusively as an IF stage for VHF-UHF transverters, while I used the other one for HF work. That was back in about 1980 or so, when they were new.

The IC-740 did have some unusual weaknesses, though. If you used it with a large "receiving" antenna, while transmitting with high power on 80m or 160m, as is very common for those using Beverage antennas, it was easy to destroy a transistor switch in the IC-740, affectionately known as "Q5." Hundreds of "Q5s" blew all over the world, including in my own rig, due to this problem.

PA stage oscillation was another problem with this series of rigs from Icom. I didn't even know mine was oscillating until I looked at its decoupled output on a spectrum analyzer, and saw high frequency modulation there all the time, even on CW. In my case, the cause of the problem was a loose ground on one of the circuit boards. I fixed it, but this would be an easy problem to never find at all without proper test equipment.

But a lot of them were definitely sold, as well as the IC-701, IC-745 and IC-751, which were its older (701) and newer (745/751) brothers that shared much of the same circuitry.

They were very popular back in the 1980's, and I still hear them on the air.

73 de Steve, WB2WIK/6