I have continued to investigate the various ways to connect my Icom IC-7300 or IC-7600 to the Elecraft KAT/KPA-500 Tuner and Amplifier. I have received some very helpful communication from a number of other Hams using Icom Radios with the Elecraft KPA-500 Amplifier and KAT-500 Tuner. It appears that there are several different ways to... Continue Reading →
Using the Elecraft KPA-500 and KAT-500 with Icom Rigs: Part I
I now have the Elecraft KAT-500 Antenna Tuner and the KPA-500 Linear Amplifier. My rigs are not Elecraft, but Icom (7600 and 7300) and Yaesu (FTDX-3000). I want to setup the Station to use the Elecraft components with my non-Elecraft transceivers. Since the KAT-500 has connections for the Icom AH-4 antenna control interface, I will... Continue Reading →
Using External Antenna Tuners with the IC-7300 – Update 9/24/20
I have been trying a couple external Tuners with my IC-7300 transceiver, with mixed results. They actually both worked, but operation is a little confusing. The tuners I have tried so far are: Elecraft KAT-500 LDG Electronics IT-100 The Elecraft Tuner is made for the K3-line but Elecraft has also made sure that it can... Continue Reading →
IC-7300 Spectrum Display with N1MM+
I recently bought an Icom IC-7300 SDR transceiver, and finally got a chance to start looking at it. My hope is to use this as a Mobile rig, although it is a bit large. Not sure how I will mount it in my F-150 yet, but I will give it a try. Since I have... Continue Reading →
Moving the DXDUSB inside the DX Doubler
I have been using the DXDUSB as the interface for my DX Doublerfor a couple years now, and what I really wanted to do is to have a DX Doubler with the USB interface "built-in." Well, the idea of actually working the DXDUSB into the DX Doubler design died when they decided to pull the... Continue Reading →
Sure I Like SDR Technology. But I still Want a “Radio”
I have worked in an industry where we have been developing "digital radios" for many years. Many of the technologies that are finding their way into the great new fad we all call SDR (Software Defined Radios), are not new. What is new is the hardware that makes it feasible to produce small, lower-power, affordable... Continue Reading →
Time Out for the Virginia QSO Party
The VA QSO Party will take place next weekend, and I invite you to participate if you have the time and interest. We would love to see the number of participant increase this year. There has been a pretty good turnout recently, and last year it seemed like we had a higher-than-normal number of out-of-state... Continue Reading →
RTTY Transmissions Off-freq with MMTTY
I participated in the NAQP RTTY contest this weekend. I normally use 2 radios in contests. In this one, I setup for RTTY and started the contest. Nobody could hear me with one radio (IC-7600) using an all-band dipole/doublet that normally works quite well for US contacts. The Radio was setup using N1MM+ with the... Continue Reading →
RTTY on the IC-7600 Using N1MM+ and MMTTY
I have been using the IC-7600 on RTTY with N1MM+ and the MMTTY application for a couple of years now. There are some good directions for this in the N1MM+ documentation, so I am not going to go through all the details. Here is a quick summary, and a screenshot of my setup, including all... Continue Reading →
AntDecoder Proto Testing with 2X6 Switch
This weekend, I finally got a chance to assemble and test a prototype PC Board for the AntDecoder. The board and the software worked fine. The only issue is that I need to add output buffers to the Arduino lines that drive the two BCD ports for the Antenna Switch. The switch uses 12-volt logic... Continue Reading →
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