IC-905 for Home Use?

I have only used the IC-905 for portable use.

It is not practical to use it for both fixed and portable. There will be too much going to the top of the mast/rotator mounting and dismounting the outdoor unit (ODU), also the weather proofig would have to be done every time. However, I am beginning to look into uses where the ODU is used indoors. The first thing that came to my mind was using it as the base transmitter for QO-100 uplink.

Until now I have used a 70cm transceiver with an indoor up-converter, the Chinese BU500 and an outdoor PA (WiFi booster). This has worked nicely, even if it occupied an HF/VHF/UHF transceiver for that.

As I am not using the IC-905 for anything else at home (yet), I set it up as a 2400MHz transmitter. One great advantage is that the '905 has a built-in GPS lock for the system, so I do know the frequency I am transmitting on.

A small experiment. today I set up the '905 with the ODU indoors on a shelf in the shack, and use it in place of the old system. A quick test showed that it works nicely. with the transceiver running about 600mW (out of 2W possible) to the old outdoor system.. Everything works nicely, though the SWR seen from the transmitter is on the high side. I tried to use a 3dB attenuator to reduce that, as I do not want to destroy the PA in the unit. It looks like I destroyed the outdoor PA. I have a spare, and a larger one from SG-Lab that just needs a heat sink, and it could be put to good use here.

With my old feed antenna for the dish, the signal is perfectly readable, so I am happy with the results so far.

The signal is not so loud, but I can work through the transponder CW and SSB.