New Icom IC-705 videos and few answers to your questions

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I’ve been getting a number of inquiries from readers lately about the new, yet-to-be-released, Icom IC-705 QRP portable transceiver. Here are a few quick answers to frequent reader questions:

  • “Will you review the IC-705?” Yes, I certainly will. If the loaner unit from Icom has a long lead time, I’ll plan to purchase one from the first production run and may sell it after the review. (Only since I already have *way* too many QRP transceivers!)
  • “When will the IC-705 start shipping to customers?” That’s a tough one to answer and, of course, I have no affiliation with the manufacturer so really can’t comment. As we’ve mentioned before, IC-705 production like other products this year has been delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact on supply chains. I do know that Icom hopes to start shipping the IC-705 within the next few months. Availability may vary based on where you live since Icom has regional market headquarters.
  • “Does the IC-705 have an internal ATU?” No, it does not. However, Icom recently announced that they will produce an antenna tuner for the IC-705 with the model number AH-705. There are no details available at time of posting, but we must assume this is an external ATU.
  • “Will it ship with a battery pack, or do we have to buy it separately?” The IC-705 will include a  BP-272 Battery pack, HM-243 Speaker-microphone and OPC-2421 DC power cable.
  • “With a color touch screen display, won’t the IC-705 current drain be too much for operating on a battery?” Since I’m primarily a field operator, this was one of my first questions as well. Turns out, Icom has employ some agressive techniques to make that display as efficient as possible. Check out the promising numbers from their recently-published specifications page:
  • “Will the IC-705 double as a portable shortwave radio broadcast receiver?” The short answer is yes, but we have yet to actually put this general coverage transceiver to the test. What we do know is that the AM bandwidth can be widened to 6 kHz according to the specifications sheet. We also know that its receiver range is 0.030–199.999 and 400.000–470.000. The IC-705 will cover the entire AM broadcast (mediumwave) band and the entire HF/shortwave spectrum with no gaps. How sensitive the IC-705 will be outside the ham radio bands remains to be seen.
  • “Will the IC-705 include the 4 meter band?” I’ve gotten this question from a number of our UK readers. The answer is no. There were conflicting reports early on, but Icom UK posted this message on May 29, 2020 noting: “We regret to inform you that contrary to our earlier messages, the 70MHz (4 Metre) band will not be included in our much anticipated IC-705 QRP SDR transceiver.“

Icom IC-705 Videos

A number of YouTube channels have been posting videos of pre-production IC-705 units in operation. Many thanks to a number of SWLing Post contributors who’ve shared links to these.

Bob McCreadie (G0FGX) of TX Films via Icom UK

Ham Radio Concepts

Amateur Logic: IC-705 Minimum Current Tweaks

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The Halcyon Days of CB Radio

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This morning, I read a message from a ham radio operator who was just awarded a vanity call sign in honor of his father’s 1970s era CB radio call sign. He was obviously very proud of the role CB played in his “formative” radio years.

Although I often only think of the impact my first transistor radio and first shortwave radio had on my life, CB radio also played a major role.

My father entered the CB radio scene in its early days here in the US. His FCC-issued call sign was KJD1166–it’s laser-etched in my memory from hearing him call it so many times when I was a kid.

Dad had a number of radios, but his favorite was a yellow Robyn T-240D (above). As a kid, I really admired this radio; not only was it stylish, but it also had a digital channel display, amazing audio, and that “Range Expand” toggle switch!

In the 1970s, the CB radio scene in my hometown was dynamic and rather well-organized. Every evening, my dad would turn on the radio and connect with a vast network of radio friends. Not only did they have call signs–and used them–but they also had the best CB handles (like “Tombstone Pete,” “Lady J,” and “Robby Rocket”).

The local CB radio scene also had in-person social meet-ups–a place where you could put a call sign and handle to a face. And let me tell you: you’d see a wide array of folks from all walks of life there. A proper melting pot.

Dad also took me to the CB radio repair shop where he’d buy supplies and occasionally get something fixed. I loved looking at the workbench full of half-disassembled radios. At one point in my childhood, all I really wanted to do was have a workbench like that and dig into radios. Even at a young age, I knew how to use a screwdriver and could void pretty much any warranty.

After the FCC did away with call signs, much of the local CB community fell apart. My dad would still check-in with friends on the air the years following, but much less frequently.

CB: A Ham Radio Gateway Drug

No doubt about it: CB radio eventually lead me down the path to ham radio.

While I never participated in the 70s CB radio scene like my dad, my best friend and I used CBs to communicate with each other across the neighborhood in the 1980s.

My buddy grew up in a multi-generation household and telephone time was restricted to grown-up use (and his teenage sister).

CB radio bridged that communication gap for us. At one point, we both used Realistic 5 Watt 40 channel walkie-talkies–it was incredibly fun and effective.

CB radio, and my dad, taught me about the components of a radio transmitting system–the radio, coaxial feed line, antenna and grounding, etc.–and also concepts like power output, standing-wave ration (SWR), and skip.

I still own my 40 channel CB walkie-talkie (a Realistic TRC-217) and my dad still has his Robyn T-240D, although neither have been on the air for decades. Still, I feel very nostalgic about the 1970s radio scene and should certainly give it credit for paving the path to my ham radio ticket.

Did CB radio play a role in your life? Please comment!

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LRA36: Radio Nacional Arcángel San Gabriel test broadcasts July 18 and July 25, 2020

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Ulis (K3LU) and Harald (DL1AX) who note that Radio Nacional Arcángel San Gabriel (LRA36) will broadcast tests again Saturday July 18th and July 25th, 2020, from 1700 to 2000 UTC on 15476 kHz USB.

Check out Harald’s LRA36 QSL card above!

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Radio Waves: Narco-Antennas, Pirate Radio Beginnings, Arqiva Restructure and Redundancies, and the Ghostly Buzzer

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Radio Waves:  Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Because I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers.  To that end: Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Skip Arey,  David Goren, Paul Evans, Kanwar Sandhu and Dave Porter for the following tips:

Special Report: Drug cartel ‘narco-antennas’ make life dangerous for Mexico’s cell tower repairmen (Reuters)

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The young technician shut off the electricity at a cellular tower in rural Mexico to begin some routine maintenance.

Within 10 minutes, he had company: three armed men dressed in fatigues emblazoned with the logo of a major drug cartel.

The traffickers had a particular interest in that tower, owned by Boston-based American Tower Corp (AMT.N), which rents space to carriers on its thousands of cellular sites in Mexico. The cartel had installed its own antennas on the structure to support their two-way radios, but the contractor had unwittingly blacked out the shadowy network.

The visitors let him off with a warning.

“I was so nervous… Seeing them armed in front of you, you don’t know how to react,” the worker told Reuters, recalling the 2018 encounter. “Little by little, you learn how to coexist with them, how to address them, how to make them see that you don’t represent a threat.”

The contractor had disrupted a small link in a vast criminal network that spans much of Mexico. In addition to high-end encrypted cell phones and popular messaging apps, traffickers still rely heavily on two-way radios like the ones police and firefighters use to coordinate their teams on the ground, six law enforcement experts on both sides of the border told Reuters.[…]

How Pirate Radio Rocked the 1960s Airwaves and Still Exists Today (HowStuffWorks)

If you’ve been binge-watching movies lately, you may have come across “Pirate Radio.” Director Richard Curtis’ 2009 comedy-drama stars the late Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Count, a disc jockey for an unlicensed rock radio station that broadcast from a rusty, decrepit ship off the British coast in the mid-1960s, defying government authorities to spin the rock records that weren’t allowed on the BBC at the time. The plot is based loosely on the saga of an actual former pirate station, Radio Caroline, that was founded by an offbeat Irish entrepreneur named Ronan O’Rahilly, the inspiration for the character portrayed by Bill Nighy.

“Pirate Radio” is a period piece, set in a time when the Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and the Who’s “My Generation” were still scandalous and controversial rather than nostalgic anthems for today’s aging baby boomers. So you couldn’t be blamed for assuming that it depicts a long-vanished phenomenon, like Nehru jackets with iridescent scarves and psychedelic-patterned paper mini dresses.

To the contrary, though, more than a half-century later, pirate radio is still a thing. In fact, it’s possibly more widespread than it was in the 1960s, even in an age when streaming internet services such as Spotify and Pandora put the equivalent of a jukebox in the pocket of everyone with a smartphone. And as a bonus, Radio Caroline still exists — though, ironically, it’s gone legal.[…]

Arqiva confirms restructure and redundancies (IBC.org)

[Note: Arqiva is the UK domestic broadcast transmission provider.]

Arqiva is working on a restructure of its business that could result in a third of its staff being made redundant.

According to a report in the Telegraph, the media infrastructure business is preparing to cut around 500 staff, which is approximately a third of its workforce.

An Arqiva spokesperson confirmed to IBC365 that some job losses will occur.

They said: “The sale of our telecoms business makes Arqiva a smaller organisation, changes our revenue profile and reduces our available profit pool.

”We are therefore conducting a review of the costs and systems we need to run our business over the next three years.

”Regrettably, we will need to reduce the size of our workforce, but it’s much too early to speculate about numbers.”

The Telegraph report cites the shift to streaming and a drop in income for broadcasters as reasons for the potential cuts.[…]

The ghostly radio station that no one claims to run (BBC Future)

In the middle of a Russian swampland, not far from the city of St Petersburg, is a rectangular iron gate. Beyond its rusted bars is a collection of radio towers, abandoned buildings and power lines bordered by a dry-stone wall. This sinister location is the focus of a mystery which stretches back to the height of the Cold War.

It is thought to be the headquarters of a radio station, “MDZhB”, that no-one has ever claimed to run. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the last three-and-a-half decades, it’s been broadcasting a dull, monotonous tone. Every few seconds it’s joined by a second sound, like some ghostly ship sounding its foghorn. Then the drone continues.

Once or twice a week, a man or woman will read out some words in Russian, such as “dinghy” or “farming specialist”. And that’s it. Anyone, anywhere in the world can listen in, simply by tuning a radio to the frequency 4625 kHz.

It’s so enigmatic, it’s as if it was designed with conspiracy theorists in mind. Today the station has an online following numbering in the tens of thousands, who know it affectionately as “the Buzzer”. It joins two similar mystery stations, “the Pip” and the “Squeaky Wheel”. As their fans readily admit themselves, they have absolutely no idea what they are listening to.[…]

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The book that took David down the path of SWLing and ham radio

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David (G4EDR), who writes:

I enjoyed reading about the vintage shortwave radio book memories from Bob W6ACU and it prompted me dig out the book which got me started in SWLing back in 1970. It was in a series of illustrated teach yourself books and the title was ‘Radio’ written by David Gibson G3JDG [see cover above].

I borrowed it from the school library and renewed the loan so many times the librarian suggested I should buy my own copy so that someone else could have the chance to borrow it! I still have my own copy of the book bought with my saved pocket money for the sum of 15 shillings. That was before the UK changed to decimal currency (15 shillings is 75p in decimal).

The book covered basic radio theory and several construction projects including a crystal set and an atu which I made and I also learned all about amateur radio and QSL cards.

That was the start of my life long obsession with radio. How things have changed over 50 years! Thank you for allowing me to rekindle those happy early days of this fantastic hobby of ours.

73, David – G4EDR.

Thank you, David, for sharing your memories with us. It’s amazing, isn’t it, the impact one book or one radio can have on one’s life!

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Guest Post: What is FM Lightning Scatter DX?

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Photo by Olivier Lance on Unsplash

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bruce Atchison, who shares the following guest post:

What is Lightning Scatter DX?

by Bruce Atchison (VE6XTC)

Believe it or not, it’s possible to receive distant FM stations during a thunder storm. While lightning makes it difficult to hear AM and shortwave broadcasts, its crackles aren’t as evident on the 88 MHz to 108 MHz band.

When lightning strikes, it temporarily ionizes the air around it. Radio signals are reflected by the charged gasses and come back down to earth.

From my experience with this kind of DX, the signal became noticeably stronger during lightning strikes. This effect lasted for a second, then the signal level dropped to its former strength.

While a thunder storm raged overhead on July 7th, I used my CC Skywave SSB radio to check out the FM band. Instead of hearing E-skip as I had hoped, I found that tropo-like conditions reflected stations down to my home. I heard signals from a hundred miles away or further.

As just one example, I found a low-power station with the call letters CKSS on 88.1MHZ. They call themselves 88.1 The One. Find out more about this station at the http://www.881theone.ca/ link. It’s located in the town of Stony Plain, Alberta. This station plays country music and airs local news events.

At a guess, I’d say the transmitter is about 120 miles from my QTH in Radway. It normally doesn’t come in at all. The signal strength varied too, showing that it wasn’t a local.

In my instance of catching CKSS’s signal, a form of tropo ducting was also present. Rain can produce reflections of signals but it’s much more pronounced in the UHF and microwave bands.

When a thunder storm is ruining AM and shortwave reception, try DXing the FM band. You’ll be surprised at what occasionally comes in.

For further information on weather-related DX, check William R. Hepburn’s article.

To see a demonstration of lightning scatter on amateur TV, watch the
following video:

To hear what FM lightning scatter sounds like, watch this video:

Thank you for sharing this guest post Bruce. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never tried to hear lightening scatter DX, but I will certainly give it a go.  This time of year, we’ve numerous thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening, so I’ll certainly have the opportunity!

Post readers: Have you ever caught FM DX off of Lightening Scatter? Please comment!

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