ICOM IC-705 Feature Walk-Through

What this hobby needs the most are building a community and providing Elmer support for all hams. Kudos to anyone trying to do either. We don’t have to agree, but contrasting opinions are more helpful if we can drop the snark. After all Josh just demo’ed a radio folks.....

 

Yeah, We found out because he was telling us all about it of Sunday coffee. Real problem is so many are so dependent on the tech they cannot handle anything when it goes away. This is happening everywhere now. Just imagine if the lights do go out and stay out for a period of time. People will go nuts.

 

We had a taste of that back in 1998 when there a was an Ice Storm ( heavy Freezing Rain). 60mm of ice fell (2.6 inches) in a day. It almost wiped Montreal off the map. Besides the local damage due trees coming down 4 of the 5 five transmission lines that feed the city were taken down, roads were impassable, roofs collapsed from the weight . A fortunate few didn't loose power at all. (very few) Some of the out lying areas took 2 months to get power back. The cleanup took even longer.
My parents lost power for 2 weeks as did my house in eastern Ontario. People were going nuts not having their expensive take out coffee, no hot showers, no internet, no video games. Fortunately both they and I had fireplace inserts and wood stoves.
For those heavily dependent on technology in was like the end of the world had come.
There also the examples of Puerto Rico and New Orleans. smaller cities seem to be more resilient. Imagine if NYC or Los Angeles were to loose power for a month.

Graham

 

I'm OK with no tuner, I can use an external one. I didn't see an ALC connection on the 705. I wonder if you could interface it with a small RF Amp like the KPA 100.

 

Real men pack a 100W rig and the car battery up to SOTA activations.

 

didn't take long for the accessories to come out:

 

Between using the wrong antenna (with a tuner!) and now being told I need to tote a "base station" and car battery for SOTA, I'm just going to give up and go back to CB. At least there the truckers aren't so demanding.



Chris

 

Uphill, both ways.

 

A real ham wouldn’t go back to CB. He’d homebrew a robotic pack mule to haul the rig and battery up to the summit.

 

Actually a "real ham" couldn't go "back" to CB because they were never there to begin with!

Chris

 

Nice idea but the SOTA rules would preclude the use of a mechanical conveyances.

3.7.1 Criteria for a valid Expedition
For an expedition to be considered valid, the following criteria must be met:
"skipped content"
5. All equipment must be carried to the site by the Activation team.

 

At least one ham uses animals (WG0AT uses goats, I think others use horses). Bicycles are considered acceptable. So, would a homebrewed robot be considered different than animals or bikes?

That said, one could use the robot to get the gear mostly to the summit, then walk it from there, just like a drive-up summit.

Chris

 

Actually a FT-891 and those light Bio Energy LI-Iron Battery I can still manage to carry. G90 at 20 Watts is lighter yet however. I tend to keep the 891 in the Truck but its only 2 mins to get it out and carry it via the Tac-Comm case it is mounted in and reattach the remote-able face plate.

 

I think the difference would be human powered rather than self-powered.

 

That’s why you build a robotic pack mule with a human brain! You’ve got to think outside the box, dude.