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[HAMHOCK75]

Last month I acquired a used 705. These are some notes from it's use in the little time I have had it.

2 meters

I have often driven on trips with rigs capable of scanning 2 M but had little success finding active repeaters that way. The 705 sdr with it's spectrum display was a real revelation on my current trip from the SF Bay area to Seattle. Active repeaters were much easier to spot. Two touches of the screen to listen to them. If they use a PL tone could be determined when a user un-keyed. There would still be an FM spectrum if there was a tone otherwise there would be a CW carrier with no modulation momentarily. The 705 can scan for the frequency of the tone if there is one.

Once in a repeater, I usually ask for a signal report, but with 705 I can see my own modulation at the repeater output. In a one MHz span, I can also often see the signal at the input to the repeater. The 705 can add markers to the display to identify the repeaters in/out frequencies.

GPS

This is my first rig with a built-in GPS. When setting the clock, don't enter the local time. If the GPS is on, it will correct the time to UTC time. To get local time with GPS on, a correction for UTC needs to be entered. If GPS is off, local time can be entered normally.

Front Facing Speaker

To my ears the front facing speaker of the 705 sounds better than the 7300 top facing speaker and even better than the 7100 rear facing speaker. As an experiment, the control head of the 7100 was flipped around so it's speaker faced front. There was significant improvement with high frequency hiss dropping off and a much better low frequency response.

I suspect it may not have been an easy decision at Icom to put the speaker on the front given how small the front panel is, but I am glad they did.

[N8YX]

A couple area buddies own them. They absolutely love the rig.

One of them takes his rig "bicycle mobile". Very nearby is one of the nicer bike trails in this part of the U.S. - it runs alongside a former canal for a good part of its length. Some of said canal has water in it.

Owing to a pedestrian hairball and his wife swerving her bike to miss it, my friend and his '705 went in the drink. He got the radio home, disassembled, cleaned off and out...reassembled and it's still ticking. I wish they'd make the thing IP67-rated (as my VX-6 and VX-7R are) but the fact it survived a bath is a testament to its construction.

[HAMHOCK75]

I hope mine does not take a dump but your friend disassembling his reminded me that there is a Japanese language, Youtube video showing how to do that.

Japanese Language Youtube video showing how to disassemble the 705

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbCrfFzmfTI

Bluetooth headsets

Fortunately, the 705 will pair with my $15 bluetooth, cellphone headset not just their rather expensive VS-3 headset. I have to turn the VOX gain up pretty high. It does not have PTT but I found that by turning off the +8V microphone jack output, then plugging the CW key into the microphone jack, the key can be used for PTT.



https://www.walmart.com/ip/onn-Bluetooth-On-Ear-Headphones-Blue/106145703

Light for Front Panel Buttons

Still looking for a simple solution to this. An example would be a small version of a closet light that I could put in front of the 705 which is located under the dashboard. A stick on light could attach to the front of a seat or the fold down armrest. The buttons are not back lighted so they cannot be seen while driving at night. So far I have learned them by feel since there are not that many.

[HAMHOCK75]

Remote Operation Freeware

There is now freeware to control the 705 remotely via WiFi. It allows running WSJT-X remotely too.

https://wfview.org/

Three pieces of software need to be installed, wfview, a driver to set a port, and to create a virtual cable. The wfview software talks to a USB port for the 705, 7100, 7300, 7610, and 9700 but only the 705, 7610, and 9700 can be connected to WiFi. The virtual cable seems to convert what looks like a USB port to send all the USB info over WiFi. Below is a photo of the 705 running vfview and WSJT-X remotely via WiFi. All the software is free and can be found at the above link.