After being on air for a short period with the ICOM 2300h I quickly realised I needed a radio with more modes, and more bands would be nice too. After looking around and constantly going back and forth between the ICOM-7300, the flagship HF radio, and the ICOM-9700, the flagship VHF/UHF/Microwave radio, I decided to best practice would be the ICOM-705 as it has all bands, all modes, and is portable for field experimentation.
Tuning into the Adelaide CBD repeater on 438.025MHz
After opening it up and quickly playing through the screen, which has an enormous amount of functionality (I am going to have to spend a while reading the manual on this one), I was quickly tuned into the Adelaide CBD repeater, 438.025MHz, which is a local link repeater and was getting crystal clear contacts
This was a duplex repeater which means you transmit on an offset, and the repeater then broadcasts it on the main frequency. The offset on this one was 7mhz, so contact is done on 431.025. This was easy to do on the radio and can be confirmed working by pressing the mic talk button and the radio changes station. This repeater also requires a tone to be played, which was at 91.5hz, which tells the repeater to repeat your broadcast—this is used to stop the repeater repeating noise.
During my talk with other amateur’s, I learnt to find a feature in the radio called TOT (Timeout Timer). This is a setting that gives you an audible alert when you are speaking for a certain period of time as some repeaters will stop repeating your broadcast if you go over N minutes, in the case of this repeater, 3 minutes.
I was also recommended to look into the AH-705 auto tuner. By the looks of it, you can run any kind of wire at any length, connect the tuner, and it will tune the radio to the frequency you want.
Elizabeth Amateur Radio Club 2m SSB net - 144.150MHz
The next night, I tuned into the local 2M SSB net that my local club EARC operates, for my first net.
This was an SSB net, so I couldn’t join in the week before with my IC-2300H. The net started dead on at 2000 and was hosted by Keith, VK5OQ.
For anyone else that hasn’t done a net, this was my first, and ran in a format like the following:
- The net operator does a call out for anyone to announce their participation
- Everyone who wants to be a part calls out their call sign
- The net operator greets everyone
- Then by order of the people who announced themselves, the operator asks them to speak and talk for a period of time.
- After each person, the host would give a signal report and respond to any questions before handing over to the next person to speak.
The net lasted about an hour and each person spoke twice. My signal report on 10w was 5/8. 5 for very readable and understanable, with 8 for signal strength. I did have quite a hard time hearing some of the people but others were very clear. Playing with the RIT function, I could make people sound less robotic too.
After the net I have concluded I may need to resolder my connectors for the aerial as they could have been done better and see if I can get better receiving from my current antenna. It would be great to get this done perfect before I get the HF dipoles running.
Packing it up - A portable case for the IC-705
To pack up the radio, I used a standard bunnings hard case and cut the inserts out to fit. I have also put in the SDR kit that I got and have left space for the antenna tuner when it comes. I also included a collection of antenna adapters as the ICOM 705 comes with a BNC connector that isn’t that commonly used for antenna fittings.
