{"id":47470,"date":"2021-01-25T11:01:01","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T15:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=47470"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:01:01","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T15:01:01","slug":"the-icom-ic-705-is-about-to-achieve-holy-grail-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/the-icom-ic-705-is-about-to-achieve-holy-grail-status\/","title":{"rendered":"The Icom IC-705 is about to achieve ‘Holy Grail’ status"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2019, shortly after Icom announced the Icom IC-705, I speculated<\/a> that this rig might be a contender for “Holy Grail” status.<\/p>\n

I must admit…the more I use this radio, the more I love it. It is a proper Swiss Army Knife of a radio. Even though I’ve owned and operated it for a few months, I still haven’t explored all that it can do, and I keep finding features I love.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Case in point<\/h1>\n

Yesterday, I upgraded my IC-705’s firmware. Unlike other devices I’ve been evaluating recently<\/a>, IC-705 firmware updates aren’t fixing numerous bugs and issues, rather they’re adding more functionality<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After completing the upgrade, I hooked the ‘705 up to my main antenna and worked a few Parks On The Air (POTA) stations off of the supplied battery pack (instead of a power supply). While I worked on other projects in the shack, I checked the POTA spots<\/a> and work a few stations with a whopping 5 watts of output power.<\/p>\n

After a couple hours on the air (mostly listening), the internal battery pack still had a good 60-70% capacity.<\/p>\n

At one point, I tried a little daytime mediumwave DXing and cruised past 630 kHz which some of you might already know is the home of one of my favorite hometown radio stations, WAIZ<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>From my home, WAIZ is a tough catch, so it was weak, but I could hear it.<\/p>\n

This reminded me that I had made a recording of WAIZ with the IC-705 when in my hometown earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Normally, I pull the MicroSD card out of the IC-705–which almost requires needle nose pliers and is one of my few complaints about this rig–and view the files on my PC or MacBook, but I was curious if perhaps the IC-705 software had a built-in file display.<\/p>\n

Of course it does!<\/p>\n

Simply press the MENU button, then the RECORD button on the touch screen, and you’ll see the following selections:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Press “Play Files” and you then see a list of folders organized by date:\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Click on a folder and you’ll see a list of recordings made that day:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Here’s the genius bit for those of us who like to archive broadcast recordings<\/a>…the IC-705 embeds the following meta data:<\/p>\n