For the past several months I’ve been using an Icom IC-746PRO that was donated to ARROW. I’ve been feeling a little guilty about using it for so long, so when someone offered to sell me a unit he bought in February, I jumped at the chance. He sold it to me for $1250, about $300 less than what they’re going for these days.
I really like the rig, although to be honest, I don’t have much to compare it with. The last rig I used regularly was an old IC-735, which I also like a lot, but it doesn’t have the bells and whistles that the 746 has.
One feature I really like is the DSP filtering. When working CW, you can narrow the passband down to next to nothing and copy only the station you want to hear. The notch filter and noise blanker really work, too–something that couldn’t be said for the IC-735.
It also has transmit audio filtering. When I first set up the radio, I had it set to the narrow filter. Fortunately, one of the first guys I talked to had used a 746PRO and talked me through the setup. After setting it to the transmit audio filter to the MID setting, he said the audio sounded much better.
I love the built-in antenna tuner, too. For example, my 40m dipole is cut for the CW portion of the band, but tunes up beautifully on the phone portion as well. I also get a good match on 15m, which lets me work a little DX there when the band’s open.
Another feature I like is the delta-Tx function. This is similar to the RIT function, except that you’re shifting the transmit frequency away from the receive frequency. The display will show the receive frequency. This is useful in situations where there’s a DX station working a pileup and you’re expected to transmit a kHz or so up from the receive frequency. You leave the radio tuned to the DX station and vary the transmit frequency with the delta-Tx control. Both RIT and delta-Tx can be adjusted up to 10 kHz away from the displayed frequency.
One thing I’m not happy with is the built-in keyer. The speed adjustment is too touchy and the memories are a pain to program. I just stick with my old Heathkit MicroMatic keyer.
Also, as I mentioned, I wasn’t able to get the RTTY decoder to work. I think that’s due to operator error, though, as I’ve never worked RTTY, and just don’t know how to set it up. I think if I played with itmore I’d get it working.
I’ve also played around a little with the band scope feature. This feature does work, but the screen resolution is pretty coarse, so I didn’t find it all that useful.
I have used it on 2m FM, CW, and SSB, and all three modes seem to work fine. One disadvantage to using it as a VHF base station is that it doesn’t cover the 440 MHz band, so if you wanted to monitor those frequencies, you’d still need another radio.
There’s a mailing list for owners and users of the IC-74PRO. The discussion there lately has been a little contentious, but overall, it’s a good group.
Leave a Reply