Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Back on HF
Well Santa was VERY good to me this year and the shack is back on the HF bands. There is now an Icom IC-706 MKIIG sitting at the main operating position on the radio desk and I have to say that all of the good things I have heard about this rig are true. I have a long way to go before learning to manipulate all of the bells and whistles on this new box and I'm looking forward to the challenge.
My first contact with it was a pile up on 17 meters calling a station in the Netherlands Antilles. Much to my surprise I head my call sign coming back to me after my third call. I have never been a “DX hound” and do not enjoy that type of operating preferring a good rag chew with “arm chair copy” if you know what I mean. Then I had a station in Cincinnati give me a call on 40 latter in the evening and while he was initially hearing me just fine a broadcast station came on and wiped out any chance we had of carrying on a conversation. I did a lot of listening and playing with the various menus before retiring for the evening and went to bed knowing what Ralph felt like when he got his Red Rider carbine.
I checked into ECARS on 7.255 mHz this morning and got my first real audio report with the 706 and according to AA2XK it sounds good. I will be giving the rig a good workout over the next few days.
