New Toy. IC-9700.

I have been thinking of getting myself a VHF/UHF transceiver with a matching screen, like on the IC-7300 I already have for HF, 6m and 4m. 

I already have my older IC-910, running okay on 2m, 70cm and 23cm. It a good transceiver, especially after I replaced the standard reference oscillator with a high stability one, and installed a 1200MHz module. It's perfect for general operation. It does multimode, including SSB and CW, but I have missed the possibility from my newer HF rigs, for having a spectrum display. But the '910 is an ageing transceiver, and who knows when it might break down?

For 2m and 70cm, this can be achieved with the IC-705, a bery nice l0ow power transceiver with a neat spectrum display, like the one in the '7300. However, I have plans for trying 1296MHz again. I did that some decades ago, and found it good fun.

Enter the IC-9700. This transceiver This comes with all three bands included as standard, 144MHz, 430MHz and 1296MHz, and it does have the spectrum display, much like the one in the '7300.

I found a used one recently, with 6 months remaining warranty a few days ago, and decided to make the jump.

The box arrived yesterday, and after a bit of work installing it, it is now running on 144MHz with a Big Wheel antenna, and on 70cm FM using the 70cm part of my V-2000 antenna (via a triplexer) I still need to test it on 1296MHz, but my antenna for this band is still mounted very low, and it's difficult to make even local contacts. Yes, there is low activity on that band, but I hope to get more stations running, as a lot of fellow hams have '9700s with an unused 1296MHz band.

So next year I should try to make the update of my antenna system, for various reasons I did not get that done this year.