Well, I am back for some more follow up.
First answer is no, you cannot hook up a keyboard which seems it should have been a no brainer, it would be great to actually send RTTY as well, Of course not while driving so maybe that was the reasoning? :tongue:
One of my friends just bought a brand new IC-7000 on Friday and there has yet to be any change to the microphone. I do not think that ICOM may consider this an issue. I think I will try to hook up an aftermarket mic such as an Astatic just for kicks and giggles.
I have been using the radio out of band quite a bit lately for the Marine MARS training with great results. So far I have not seen any loss of features with the mod. My Yaesu 857D no longer had the automatic repeater shift once it was MARS modified. This seems like a small feature but to me it is very cool to keep especially when traveling. Once a frequency pair is found a simple tone scan is done and your set.
I never did the TV mod because of the recent change to digital TV and figured it is kinda useless.
Now for those who wish to mount it using the remote kit one little tid bit I found reading on the internet.
I hooked up the remote cable to the face unit and the radio itself. There is a screw that is included to better secure the cable and I thought to myself, "self, it clicks into place why waste my time with that little screw because I can remove it quicker if I wanted to without it"
Stand by for the Homer Simpson moment
WELL, like I said at the beginning of this review, I am not the most technical but I would report my findings. I will leave the "why it does what it does" to the more techie people here.
Every time I keyed up and started talking I would get squiggly lines on the radio display, which in turn, would magnify itself in the monitor of the Jeep. So after installing several toroids from radio shack and not curing the problem, I decided to look to google. Apparently, the screw also provides a better ground for the remote :blushing::blush: so I installed the little tiny screw, guess what?, No more squiggly lines. I could give my explanation as to why, I am sure I am wrong so techies jump in here, I just know it made a difference and works.
I am also using an LDG Auto Tuner which I will do a review on later but I want to add this to the review of the radio. The tuner I bought from W4RT had the battery pack installed for use with my Yaesu. When using the included ICOM cable you do not need an external, or in this case, internal power source. While I was connecting the cable to the radio I noticed a few little sparks, obviously from the batteries that were installed in the tuner. Next thing I find, the radio will not tune using the tuner button on the radio. My buddy has an IC-7000 as well and he has the same set up with no problem, so we hooked my cable to his in case my cable was bad, but it worked fine on his. The only difference between his tuner and mine was the internal batteries. So I removed the batteries and it did not work on my radio but did on his, I sent the 7000 back and was sent a new radio, apparently the little sparks shorted something out. SO, do not use the internal batteries on tuner with the IC-7000. I use the internal batteries on that tuner when using it with the FT-817ND so it is no issue because the radio will not provide power.
More to come,,,,,,,
