What I like about the IC-7000
First, a brief disclosure: this is not an unbiased review. This is just a brief recap of the things I like about the radio. And I’m sort of an Icom fanatic, so any “review” would be inherently biased.
Having used the IC-7000 on several occasions, both in my apartment and in the field, I think I can offer a brief review of the pluses and minuses. I have not used it on the HF bands, so I can’t comment on its abilities there. I simply don’t have the technology to string up the antenna required to make that work in a truly unbiased environment. Living in an apartment forces you to make a few compromises in terms of antennas. I have had a chance to use it with a GP-9 (2m/70cm dual band vertical), so I can comment on its performance on those two bands. That being said, let’s begin.
The IC-7000 has a beautifully designed front panel. Some of the buttons could stand to be a little bigger (gloved fingers at 3am when you’ve been up for 20+ hours are a little “big” for buttons a quarter of an inch across). The navigation is fluid, once you know where everything is. Those people who argue that “everything’s buried under menu after menu!” haven’t actually read the manual, in my opinion. I figured out most of the basic “get on the air” commands without the manual and managed to bring up more than a few of the advanced options once I’d read the manual once or twice. Or thrice. You absolutely positively must bring the manual with you to any operation. There’s a reason it’s 70 or 80 pages and full-sized.
Your options on 2m/70cm FM are rather limited: the bandwidth filters are fixed, but they’re all more than sufficient. I was working the handhelds at our recent AdventureTrek with the broadest filter setting and the pre-amp engaged. With the pre-amp off, I couldn’t begin to even hear them break squelch, let alone the actual communication. Part of this is probably thanks to the 16′ antenna on a 15′ mast, but I know that my other radio wasn’t having a whole lot of luck with the same antenna.
The radio has a feature that I was pretty excited about, but also a little bummed about: priority scanning. We were using two frequencies at AdventureTrek. One was the “local” repeater (read: 30 miles away) and the other was a simplex frequency. I had the “A” VFO keyed to the repeater and the “priority” monitor keyed to the simplex frequency. The handhelds were primarily working simplex, but this was something I wanted to play with. The downside is this: when someone transmits on the “priority” channel, you need to manual re-tune to the “priority” frequency. Or, keep the “B” VFO set to the priority and remember to switch back. If the radio could “hold” the priority frequency long enough for you to key up, that would be awesome. I transmitted on the repeater frequency more than a couple of times before I figured this out. It’s fortunate that the repeater was lightly (read: never) used, because I would have gotten more than a few “What are you talking about?” replies, I imagine.
The other thing I don’t like is the mounting position of the mic plug: on the bottom of the detachable faceplate. With the radio sitting on a desk, you can’t have the mic plugged in and not have the little kickstand up.
That’s about all I can think of at the moment…if any more rants or raves come to mind, you’ll be the first to know.
