Radio Returns – N2ULF's Ham Radio Blog

Over the last few weeks, I’ve made significant changes to my station.  I found an IC-7000 locally, at a very fair price.  It’s an amazing little radio and does what had taken many pieces of equipment to accomplish previously.  With the 7000 coming into the shack, I sold off much of the gear that I had been using for HF/VHF.

Out With the Old

Both the IC-718 and Timewave DSP-59+ have left my shack.  I really enjoyed the 718.  Icom advertises it as the “get into HF rig” and that’s just what it was for me. I picked this up in like new condition 18 months ago. With this rig barefoot and a wire antenna, I worked the world, earning DXCC and WAS. I’ve tried lots of different modes with it and it never let me down.  I was sorry to see it go.

The Timewave DSP-59+ is an audio noise reduction filter I got in a package deal with my HF rig and didn’t think I’d use it much since the rig had its own DSP. As it turned out, it made a huge difference on all modes. It has noise reduction, adaptive multi-tone notch filtering, low/high/bandpass filtering, and a RTTY remodulator. I found it to be extremely useful for PSK31 as well: really bringing out the weak ones and suppressing nearby signals. When I moved it to my TR-751A that doesn’t have built in DSP, it made an even larger difference.

My TR-751A is gone as well and the TenTec 1209 is for sale.  The TR-751A was a very capable 2m all mode despite its age.  The other piece of gear I sold was a Rigblaster Plus, which I had picked up to use with the 751A.  Since my Rigblaster Plug and Play works with the IC-7000, that’s all I need for digital modes on 2m and HF.

In With the New

The Crown Jewel of my updated station: The Icom 7000 HF/VHF/UHF All Mode Transceiver

I also added the large and well built Voice Master Pro Speaker

A Daiwa CN-801HP Cross Needle SWR and Power Meter for HF/VHF

An RS-35A Linear Power Supply

The supply is more than necessary for the IC-7000, but I got a good deal and it should work well when I add a VHF amplifier.

The last new piece of equipment is an Alpha-Delta DX-LB Plus.  This antenna covers all the HF bands and tunes up on 6m as well.  Here I am the (early) morning of the installation.