My signal reports were solid 59’s and occasionally 59+ all across the USA. My first impressions are that the rig works well (and possibly better) than the IC-7100 on SSB. I started operating on 20m during the North America QSO party on Saturday with the 1/4 wave verticals.
ICOM 7100 PROBLEMS DRIVERS
Rig control via Ham Radio Deluxe was fairly straightforward as the USB drivers are the same as the IC-7100. I needed a plug adapter (which I luckily had on hand) to plug in my Vibroplex paddles. First thing I installed was a headset adapter so I can use the Koss SB-45 headset. Most of the buttons are labeled the same and many of the setting menus are also the same. My first comment is that having used an IC-7100 for some time I was instantly familiar with about 90% of the IC-7300 controls. I spent some time playing with the new IC-7300 transceiver this weekend on various modes. I hope to try some peer-to-peer Winlink with KF0MP soon and Cliff is planning to put up a digipeater at his QTH soon. I have been able to send some messages via this setup without difficulty. With this I can hit the W5STX-10 station consistently but still not the RGV digipeater. I pulled the homebrew 2m Moxon out of mothballs and set it up at about 20 feet pointed generally Northwest. I could not hit the RGV digipeater and direct to W5STX-10 was hit or miss. I was able to have a simplex QSO with Cliff, N5CEY, 16 miles away near Bayview. Even at about the same height as the discone this antenna tuned beautifully across the 2m band. I tested this by installing on a painters pole and varied the height up top about 20 ft. First up was the Ed Fong DBJ-1 J-pole I assembled last week. I have shown before that my setyp on the IC-7100 works but the lack of a local digipeater has limited my use. There is an increasing amount of local activity in setting up and using VHF Winlink. Will be interesting to see how HF works especially with an NVIS antenna. The FT-817 is nice in that it can work VHF & HF with the Signalink.
ICOM 7100 PROBLEMS PORTABLE
My next experiments will likely center around setting up an NVIS antenna for HF and getting setup on my portable rigs. Packet VHF works well except I am still have an issue when using K5RAV-10 in which I can send email but not receive it.Īll in all, it looks like the setup works for both HF and VHF WinLink. VARA FM works quite well and is relatively fast. On VHF packet there are several new stations that I can use. Here again I was able to complete an exchange with HF stations up the state from here. I adjusted the output signal to indicate 1/3 of the ALC range. On the IC-7300 be sure to select CV-I for PTT method and leave DTS and RTS unchecked.
I downloaded and installed VARA HF and was able to get it setup with minimal issue. I had the best luck with stations up state on 40m and was able to verify connections and exchanges. We have local HF stations now on 40m, 30m and 20m but I could not access them. I found these instructions useful for the IC-7300 ARDOP setup.
On HF I found that the old WINMOR method has largely been replaced by ARDOP and VARA is of course available as well.
I don’t use WinLink too often, especially on HF, but with the recent local repeater changes on VHF I decided to test as many access modes so I don’t fumble around with setting when I may need them the most.
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