The Undiscovered Icom: IC-746 may be 20 years old, but it still rocks …

Early Friday morning July 17, 2020

I have another rig ready for eBay — my Yaesu FT-847 HF/VHF/UHF transceiver. I’m nearly ashamed to admit that I didn’t realize all of the rig’s features until I spend a couple of days with it on the test bench putting it through its paces.

And I found another HF rig I was thinking I had sold but I hadn’t — I had only gotten as far as taking photos for an eBay listing that never happened. The next rig I’ll sell is an Icom IC-746 — the non-Pro version. I operated the rig for a bit this evening, and boy howdy, its just as sweet a rig as it ever was. I bought this rig as a back up rig for portable and Field Day use. The 746 is just perfect for Field Day, its easy to operate and the display is large and easy to read in daylight. I don’t know if the rig has any accessory filters in it, but I know it lacks the level of DSP that the PRO version has. I have owned it for years but don’t recall ever using it on CW, it was phone only, and digital with a Signalink USB.

I need to pull the bottom cover off the IC-746 to see if any optional filters are installed.

Tomorrow I plan to check in to my CW traffic net with the 746. Tonight I finally checked in from Studio C using My Icom IC-756PROII. The reason the NCS couldn’t copy me when using the SB-102 was most likely due to the static crashes. Right now the sun sets just after the net starts, and when the net begins, I have trouble copying him. Once the sun gets lower, copy gets much better.

I’m still looking at upgrading to an IC-7610 transceiver if and when I sell enough radio gear to fund the purchase of one. Right now, DX Engineering has them for $2,999.99, which was exactly what I paid years back when I bought my IC-756PROIII brand new. The IC-7610 is quite a rig, and I’m looking forward to the day when I have one.

73 es CUL … de KY4Z … SK … SK (dit dit) ….