KIX-OnlineLinks to amateur (ham) radio goodies on the web

This is one robust portable HF rig

I’ve had one of these for about five years now, what’s not to love.  I’ve taken this rig to all the New England states, hiking on the Appalachian trail and had a blast maritime mobile.

A lot of people don’t know how truly flexible this radio is with a few mods or hours on the bench making your own accessories.  Whether you homebrew your own CI-V interface (rig control) or mic mods, there’s so much there to do.

I stumbled on a page that had some detailed info recently and decided to rumble through my bookmarks and post a bunch of the mods here.

There are hundreds of sites out there on this rig, so if you know of a good site with mods and such, post in the comments section and share with everyone else!

Athens (TX) ARC has a neat page to get you started at:  http://www.athensarc.org/706.asp

DF4OR has a great site devoted to the CI-V interface with loads of info and projects at http://www.plicht.de/ekki/civ/civ-p0.html

Hampedia has a bunch of links and text files devoted to many projects at http://www.ham.dmz.ro/icom/ic-706.php

Zerobeat.net has a nice list at http://www.zerobeat.net/g3ycc/706_1.htm

KB2LJJ has a bunch of info (though the links are hard to read with the color in the background) but the info is useful indeed: http://www.kb2ljj.com/data/icom/ic-706.htm#235

Probably one of the most useful resources is on the RigPix database – the service manual!  http://www.rigpix.com/icom/ic706mkiig_service.pdf

As usual, if you have any good links, comment below.

8.30.09 addition:  I found this site to have LOADS of 706 information:

http://kv5r.com/articles/ham/706.asp

I’m often struck by the quality of freely available software.  I’m a huge proponent of open source software.  However, software doesn’t have to be open source to be monetarily free.  Ham Radio Deluxe is such a program.

Ham Radio Deluxe's main window

Let’s take a deeper look at why I’ve recommended this software so often over the past few years.

This software does so much more than just control your rig.  It is a full featured software package that also includes:

• full featured logbook
• dx cluster (customizable)
• log book analysis
• satellite tracking interface
• scanning
• and a whole lot more

You can connect this software to your radio using a normal serial port and several possible interfaces.  I currently use a West Mountain Radio Rigtalk. The radio I use is a 706 MKIIG.

You can get that interface rather cheap (around $60.00).  You can also homebrew interfaces really cheap, but then you will still need a USB to serial interface if you don’t have a serial port on your computer.  I use a laptop that doesn’t have a serial port, so the cost of sixty bucks was a reasonable one.

Here are some screen shots of several of the other features:

Logbook screen

Logbook Analysis

Logbook entry

There’s a lot more to the software.  You can spend easily a hundred dollars or so to perform the same tasks as you can with HRD for free.

For more information, check out the Ham Radio Deluxe website at:

http://www.ham-radio-deluxe.com/

As mentioned before, if you don’t have a USB-serial converter and the additinal hardware, you can pick up the West Mountain Radio RigTalk as shown below at their website http://www.westmountainradio.com.