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In: Amateur Radio, Computer
With: 0 Comments

I finally decided to go with Mac for Amateur Radio stuff. Time Machine and Spotlight make life so much more comfortable. Not to mention good sleep/wake performance, terminal with bash command line etc. Of course, there will always be some tools that are Windows only, so I use Parallels for this. Download your Windows tool on Mac with Safari, organise stuff in iCloud and then just double click the installer program from Mac. Parallels will start Windows (from pause, no booting involved) and run the installer. When it’s time to use it, launch the tool with Spotlight from Mac. IMHO this will work best withRead More →

On:
In: Amateur Radio
With: 6 Comments

So the clock battery in my IC-7300 failed. Yes, the rig has been switched off for longer periods of time. Well bad luck. I compared the RT clock circuits of the IC-7300, IC-9700, IC-7610 and IC-705 using the service manuals that can be found on-line. Interestingly, the circuits in all rigs except the IC-705 are identical. Actually the clock circuit in the IC-705 is just a little different. “I have a clock in my shack, don’t need one in my rig..” Well true, I also don’t need a logbook program, I like to write. I don’t need the dx cluster, I like to listen toRead More →

On:
In: Amateur Radio, Computer
With: 4 Comments

The new IC-705 has many functions. One of them is D-Star terminal mode (TM). Icom presents TM in two flavours: internal and external. Internal TM uses the WLAN connection and connects directly to the internet, no additional hardware required. However, you have to configure a TM capable reflector in settings. So changing reflector means changing settings. What is needed here is some TM “proxy”, that handles all connections and routes them to the different reflectors, based on D-Star linking commands. In addition, this proxy should implement some form of heartbeat so that the incoming UDP port on your router remains open, even when there is noRead More →

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In: Amateur Radio, Audio
With: 0 Comments

Both the IC-7300 and the IC-9700 have an IF output option. A great feature that enables the receive of all kinds of exotic transmissions. On the IC-7300, Icom pitched this feature at DRM receive. Soon after the IC-7300 launched, it became clear that the IF output bandwidth varies with the receive mode setting, which is illogical (Mr. Spock). For DRM receive, all is fine: set mode to AM, connect something like DREAM to the IF output and listen to PC audio. For CW skimmer, it’s a little more problematic, so maybe Icom only had DRM receive in mind when designing this. It will work, butRead More →