I followed the first hint of a Icom IC-9700 and I kept a close eye on it and when they added the 10MHz ref in I plopped down some money and got on the reservation list for one. When I received it I found out the the reference in is nothing more than like the crystal calibrators of old and used for calibration, it does not lock the oscillator like on the 7610 or other radios that have a reference in.
When the radio sits on your desk it gets pretty warm and then when you key up the fan kicks on and on 23cm SSB you can watch it drift 70Hz or more and then it slowly drifts back, not what you would expect for a modern radio in 2019, there are rumors that Icom may do a firmware patch to run the fan all the time to help with the drift, but a real reference in would have fixed this, I did a fan mod to run the fan all the time and yes it helps but the drift is still there.
The more important thing to me though is that my old IC-820 and my IC-821 and my IC-910 and my IC-9100 all supported 9600 packet, for some 25 years Icom has provided the ability to do 9600 but for whatever reason they dropped support on the 9700 and failed to mention it, contacting Icom support they acted like they had never heard of 9600 packet, It's still being advertised as "All modes including FM, SSB, AM, CW, RTTY, Digital, D-Star Digital Voice and Digital Data", the digital part after RTTY is 1200 AFSK in Icom's mind, and why I am leery when someone says all mode now.
Don't get me wrong, there will be many people who will use and love their 9700 and not notice these issues, and I also could deal with the drift but the 9600 missing is really a burn to me.
So it's either Icom comes out with a firmware patch to fix the 9600 issue (losing hope on that one) or I go back to my 9100 (probably the best) or I get another 910 or some other 2nd radio to get 9600 packet back.
73 Kevin WA7FWF
On 5/16/2019 8:56 PM, W3AB/GEO wrote:
Kevin,
How were you burned by Icom?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Sent from my two way wrist watch 73 de W3AB/GEO
On May 16, 2019, 18:52, at 18:52, Kevin via AMSAT-BB [email protected] wrote:
Having recently been burned by Icom I will wait to see that on the Elecraft the Ref In is really for a 10MHz GPSDO lock and not just "calibration" and that the claim "all mode" really is all mode up to and including 9600 Packet.
Other than that it looks pretty good...
LOL Kevin WA7FWF
On 5/16/2019 5:38 PM, kb2mjeff--- via AMSAT-BB wrote:
https://qrznow.com/elecraft-k4-high-performance-direct-sampling-sdr/;
https://qrznow.com/elecraft-k4-high-performance-direct-sampling-sdr/
73 Jeff kb2m
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