Well on Monday 31st August I received my ICOM IC-705. I think the first to arrive in VK7!
Given the delays in its arrival in VK the author had time to read up the manuals and watch the plethora of YouTube videos and come to grips with the rig before its arrival.
This resulted in a presentation to the local club – Radio and Electronics Association of Southern Tasmania Inc. on Wednesday 2nd September 2020 and the YouTube videos of the presentation can be seen here:
Whilst the weather was reasonable the author did a quick trip up to Mt Wellington (VK7/SC-001) to tests the ICOM IC-705 on Saturday 5 September 2020 in a SOTA situation.
When the rig was first switched on there was absolutely no noise and I thought I had a broken wire in the antenna! Then it was realised that all the Noise Reduction, Noise Blanking and narrow Notch Filter settings were on. Switch these off and things came to life. Trap for young (and not so young) players in a very low noise environment!
I operated mainly on 40m and all my SOTA contacts where made on this band I also listened and heard DX stations on 20 and 15m but didn’t make contact with them.
It was great to make a couple of IC-705 to IC-705 contacts with Perrin VK3PT/ and Peter VK3GV. It was also good to make some Summit to Summit contacts and also good to get some great comments about the voice quality from the Bluetooth VS-3 headset.
The 10 watts is certainly an advantage over my usual SOTA rig the FT-817 and the ease of operation and Bluetooth headset does make things easier when juggling a log, etc.
A YouTube of the activation can be found on the Author’s YouTube Channel at:
The IC-705 is certainly a nice rig for SOTA operations and will be my rig of choice for future SOTA activations. Thanks to all who made contact with me during the activation.
73, Justin, VK7TW
VK7TW 