My IC-705 and AH-705 arrived today from ML&S, I wasted no time getting it hooked up to an antenna and started working my way through the manual getting to know the menu system.
After a few hours tinkering I piped up on 20m SSB and worked a couple of stations with ease using 10w. No problems getting through and to my surprise got a 5/9 report from both stations.
Later in the evening I decided to give it a go on 20m FT8 using just 5w O/P using the battery on the back of the radio that was now fully charged. It’s interesting to note that I didn’t need any drivers on my MacBook Pro to use the CAT and Audio via USB on the IC-705. It was simply plug and go. Much easier than it was with the FTDX10.
There was a fair amount of DX about on 20m including a few stations from Australia and Japan. I never managed to get a response back from either but, PSKReporter was showing that I was heard!
I also noticed that a station in China was hearing me too. BG7BDB in LinXiang City reported hearing me at -17dB. I quickly hunted around the waterfall and found him and gave a call.
To my amazement he came straight back to me and we exchanged SNR reports, 73 and he was in the log.
Looking at my WSJT-X log the distance to BG7BDB is 5467 Miles, at 5w O/P that equates to 0.91mW/Mile!
FT8 really is an impressive mode, it allows QRP stations to work the DX that just wouldn’t be possible on SSB. I have to say I’m really impressed with the Icom IC-705. The receiver and filtering isn’t as good as my Yaesu FTDX10 but, it’s an impressive little package. Portable operations with this radio is going to be a lot of fun!
More soon …
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