{"id":49185,"date":"2021-06-10T08:32:20","date_gmt":"2021-06-10T12:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=49185"},"modified":"2022-10-28T07:26:53","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T11:26:53","slug":"the-icom-ic-705-is-this-really-a-new-holy-grail-swl-bcl-receiver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/the-icom-ic-705-is-this-really-a-new-holy-grail-swl-bcl-receiver\/","title":{"rendered":"The Icom IC-705: Is this really a new holy grail SWL\/BCL receiver?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Many thanks to SWLing Post<\/em> contributor,\u00a013dka<\/a>, who shares the following guest post:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

The Icom IC-705: Is this really a new holy grail SWL\/BCL receiver?<\/h1>\n

by 13dka<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Thomas got wind of its development in 2019 he immediately asked “could the Icom IC-705 be a shortwave listeners holy grail receiver?”<\/a>. I usually wince a little when I hear “holy grail” because it means very different things to different people, it’s also a moving target with many people aiming at the spot where it was decades ago. But Thomas certainly had a very level-headed assembly of technical performance, quality and practicality requirements in mind when he used that term, and I thought he might be onto something!<\/p>\n

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

There are some excellent, trustworthy reviews of the IC-705 out there<\/a>. The following is not one of them, I just want to share an opinionated breakdown on why I think this is an interesting radio for SWLs\/BCLs indeed, also deliberately ignoring that it’s actually a transceiver.<\/p>\n

Jumping shop<\/h1>\n

While the era of superhet\/DSP-supported tabletop holy grails ended with the discontinuation and sell-off of the last survivors more than a decade ago, powerful PC-based SDR black boxes were taking over the mid-range segment and it became very slim pickings for standalone SWL receivers: Thomas just recently summed up the remaining options here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Between the steady supply of inexpensive yet serviceable Chinese portables, upgraded with a least-cost version of DSP technology, and the remnants of the high end sector there’s very little left to put on the wish list for Santa – that doesn’t need to be paired with a computer that is.<\/p>\n

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

No surprise that SWLs\/BCLs in search of new quality toys with tangible controls are taking a squint over the fence to the ham transceiver market: Hams are still being served the best and the latest in radio technology in all shapes and sizes, and even entry-level rigs usually come with feature-rich general coverage receivers. But transceivers never had SWLs much in their focus in the past decades, and particularly not BCLs: Frontend adaptation, additional AM filters, switches and functions would’ve meant increasing costs and so transceivers were never perfected for that purpose. DSP and SDR technology allowed for improvements on that without actually adding (much) hardware and so some interesting alternatives surfaced in the past years, but most of them still come with little downers, at least for BCLs.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Also, it was always quite a leap to pay substantial money for radios that usually lack something concerning SWL\/BCL usage somewhere, be it sensitivity on MW, filter options or functions not available in all modes, and then having (legal, safety, money) worries about a transmitter lying dormant in that radio, particularly for people who have absolutely no plans on getting a license. I wasn’t considering any of those for yet another reason:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The light at the end of the tunnel: Icom swag that came with the first EU batch of 705s<\/p><\/div>\n

I just want it all…to go!<\/h1>\n

Being interested in all things radio, shortwave and beyond<\/em> and forced to be a “DX nomad”, I always wanted to have top-notch wideband SDR performance at my remote listening posts on the German North Sea coast, to fully harvest the rich DX fishing grounds they offer on the entire radio spectrum.<\/p>\n

I took my SDR boxes to the dike a few times but that turned out to be rather frustrating: In that noise-devoid environment, a lot of separation between the laptop in the car and the antenna is needed to avoid picking up residue digital hash from the laptop, then my laptops turned out to run out of juice within ~2 hours because SDR software is taxing the CPU and I couldn’t find a car charger that didn’t emit catastrophic QRM levels. Last but not least putting up all that stuff was a lot of hassle for just 2 hours of fun. So I was waiting for a battery-powered, standalone, wideband SDR with all of the performance advantages and features SDR technology brings, one portable<\/em> radio to cover everything<\/em>. The ham market had nothing like this to offer, and I sure didn’t expect it would come from Icom to challenge holy grails. Speaking of which:<\/p>\n

A true new holy grail must be a step up from the last one, and it took a while until SDRs could achieve that in all aspects. I always considered the Icom IC-R 8600 to be that radio, it caters for everything an SWL\/BCL would want, but it has one major flaw in my book: Considering the ever-deteriorating noise situation and ever-increasing hardships to put up reasonable antennas spoiling the fun for so many of us at home, I feel that a new holy grail radio is not only supposed to have outstanding performance and features, it should be as portable and practical as possible to make it easy to use them at off-grid places, where that performance can still be utilized to its full extent<\/em>!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Packing up for the dike<\/p><\/div>\n

The egg-laying wool-milk pig<\/h1>\n

Cue the IC-705 – its coverage is 30 kHz-200 MHz without gaps, then 400-470 MHz on top, it has everything the SWL and BCL<\/em> in me wants in a top-notch all-purpose receiver and also covers most of my “points of interest” beyond shortwave – all mode VHF\/UHF ham bands, all FM broadcast bands, airband(s), I can hunt LEO satellites, ship traffic on VHF or radiosondes on 400 MHz…<\/p>\n

It’s powered by a somewhat ubiquitous Icom snap-in battery format, it has a big comfy VFO knob, some rotary encoders and buttons on the front panel for good haptics and of course a friendly color touchscreen to manage the SDR-typical flood of functions. When Thomas reported that the receive-only endurance would be satisfying 7 hours<\/a> with the included BP-272 battery I knew this is (well, lets say 90% of) the bag of tricks I was waiting for! But let’s take a look at how holy-grail-good it really is:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Left image: Radiosonde (weather balloon) on 400 MHz. Tracking them and trying to locate the debris is a cool “radio sport”! Right image: Daytime cheat for wishing on shooting stars: Small meteor in range of the French GRAVES space surveillance radar.<\/p><\/div>\n

The nitty gritty radio stuff: Sensitivity, selectivity, dynamic range and all that jazz<\/h1>\n

Sensitivity<\/h1>\n

Let’s start with how quiet this radio is: The 705’s noise floor is on par (within a few dB) with the very best of current ham transceivers and no hissy audio amp is spoiling that at the other end. Likewise, the sensitivity figures are matching those of other transceivers, with the differences being on the second decimal place: 0.16 microvolts on SSB is not breaking any records but it’s still an excellent result.<\/p>\n

The preamp has two gain settings (‘P.amp 1’ =13dB and ‘P.amp 2′ =18dB) below 30 MHz, with the second being quite suitable for antennas with very low output: It works great with small passive loops like the YouLoop and other lossy antenna types. I even tried the radio successfully with a mere 1m\/3’ telescopic whip connected directly to the radio at home and also mounted on a tiny and pretty awful magmount on the car roof at my dike listening post<\/a>. To my surprise it didn’t leave much to desire in terms of reception with this absolute minimum of an antenna, even on long wave – it just felt like a regular portable, with lower S-meter readings but better signal quality compared to my regular portables.<\/p>\n