Now I need to buy one!
The ICOM 7300 session/lecture was originally planned for the HF Month – March 2017 – however as the Wyong field day is at the end for February and many members wanted a reason to grab one at the field day, a lecture/review of the gear was more appropriate in January.
Horst gave us a presentation and demonstration of the ICOM 7300. Bob complemented with on-field experience and demonstration of the noise cancelling speaker. The IC7300 comes with amazing features: low current drain on receive, remote control capabilities, built-in ATU, spectrum analyser, touch screen (is it rhinotillexis proof?), and above all, it’s an SDR! Horst also compared price/features of the IC-7300 to some of the Flexradios.
The RS-BA1 software allows you to control many of the ICOM radios, including the IC 7300. The features not available for the radio you are connecting too are “dimmed” on the window. Unfortunately, this window cannot be customised or even resized, which would be a nice thing to have if you wanted to develop a remote head to use in the car. Note that for the IC 7300, a computer (server) is required at the radio end to control the radio, the radio is not equipped with an ethernet port like some of the other ICOMs. You can control your whole ICOM radio stack from your shack, bedroom, or wherever else your are in the world (or the moon!).
So what will Yaesu, Kenwood and the other brands will do now that so many people rushing up to buy this new ICOM? The Yaesu’s attempt didn’t cut it with a spectrum analyser that would not work at the same time as the audio, until the latest upgrade (FT-991a). The FT-991 also drains near 2amps on receive, not a good contender for field operations.
Damn lecture! I went and bought one because of this talk.