| HB9ALH |
Rating:     |
2022-11-17 | |
| Good SW, but not trivial to make it work properly |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
I use the SW with my IC-7610. I like the SW. It is very helpful for changing settings of the IC-7610 But there are a number of precautions you have to take, to make sure that the SW runs flawless and doesn't stops working (freezing):
- The program is quite delicate in terms of installation. You have to have direct connection to USB ports from the PC. With USB Hubs in between it might not work. Specially the USB3 cable for the I/Q Spectrum should not be longer than 2-3m.
- The I/Q Spectrum is working. But it is not sensitive enough. Scaling of the Signal strength is wrong, meaning too low by about 30 to 40 dbm. Tom has committed to look into it. The way it is now, it is worse than the Spectrum indication on the IC 7610 itself.
- You have to put toroids on the TRX side as well as on the PC side of the USB cables to make sure the there is no RF which interferes with the communication.
- you have to make sure that all Energy savings settings on the USB ports of the PC are switchen off.
So, to make it work is not that trivial. It took me a number of steps and changes of my USB station cabling. The 60-day trial phase was good for that test phase. So, make sure it works properly on your station setup before you order it. |
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| KD0AA |
Rating:      |
2022-03-25 | |
| Excellent software that makes your life easy with Icom's! |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
| The software allows you to point and click on so many settings that would take time to find in the Icom menu's! It truly makes it SO MUCH easier than looking for the menu item! Tom's support is excellent should you need to contact him!! I use it with my 7300 and my 7610 and it just makes operating SO MUCH better!!! I can not remember the last time I had to open up the Icom's menu's and look for a setting. Try the trial and I am sure you will gladly pay the reasonable fee. TNX Tom for all of your work and support on making an excellent product that enhances the operation of Icom's!!! 73 Peter KH2AA |
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| G8FXC |
Rating:     |
2022-02-17 | |
| Core of an excellent computerised shack |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Update: Tom gives an excellent level of support for his products. I recently purchased a ShuttleXpress tuning control to add to my shack PC. It worked very well with Win4Yaesu controlling my FT-991A, but was sluggish and "gritty" with the IC-7300 through Win4ICOM. I reported this to Tom by email through his support channel, he responded with a few questions which I replied to promptly and he released a new version of Win4ICOM just over a week after my initial report - fixing the problem completely...
I've used several of the leading CAT programs over the years including HRD and DXLabs. They all work reasonably well, but they are all showing their age these days. I tried Win4ICOM on the 30 day eval and liked it, but I had some hardware problems that stopped me using it. I mentioned them in the Groups.IO support group and the author, Tom, came back quickly with some advice that got it working for me, so I bought a licence.
This is a very competently designed and built application which delivers all the functionality of my 7300 through an attractive and, generally, ergonomic screen interface. It loaded and configured easily and I was controlling the rig within minutes. My only criticism of the application is that the screen is not resizeable. Having built quite a few Windows applications myself, I can understand why Tom has gone down this path, but I do hope that he will offer a "compact" layout in addition to the current full layout in a future release. The attraction of a computerized shack is the ability to combine a lot of functionality at the same time - log book, DX Cluster, rig control, panadaptor and decoders for various digital modes. This requires a lot of screen real estate and the current Win4ICOM screen takes up a lot of space.
Where Win4ICOM really wins is in its ability to integrate a large number of other applications in order to arrive at a serious computerized shack solution. The panadaptor of the 7300 is good for the price, but it is a small screen and can only display the band that the radio is currently tuned to. I've added an SDRPlay RSP1a SDR receiver with the SDRUno software, connected to a RadioAnalog PTRX-7300 in the radio. This links to Win4ICOM so that tuning and mode selection is synchronised. The synchronization can be turned off in which case I get the two receivers that I was used to in my previous radio but are not present in the IC-7300.
I also run SwissLog for logging, Bandmaster for a DX Cluster client, FLDigi for the older digi-modes, and WSJT-X for the newer modes. Win4ICOM is able to bind all of these together simultaneously.
The combination that I use is not an integrated suite in the way that HRD is, so it is quite a lot more effort to get it all configured so that all the components work together. But on the other hand, I am able to choose the best available solution for each function - the hub functionality of Win4ICOM allows me to mix-and-match to achieve the solution that best meets my needs with the flexibility to swap out individual components if they fall behind. |
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| KC1LML |
Rating:      |
2021-11-30 | |
| Very well designed - love it |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I only needed 1 day of the 30 day trial to know I wanted to keeping using Win4Icom with my IC-7300.
I am using it with Fldigi and WSJT-X. Once setup, I've found they work flawlessly. It's true both Fldigi and WSJT-X require certain settings to work with Win4Icom which render them inoperable on their own, but why would someone want to do that once they are using Win4Icom?
I saw a review on YouTube that thought it should have a main tuning dial more like the radio itself. But for me I much prefer the way I can get on a frequency digit in Win4Icom and use my mouse thumbwheel for very precise control.
For me it was well worth the $60, especially compared to other software I have bought that fell short of my expectations.
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| VK4MA |
Rating:      |
2021-09-13 | |
| Fantastic software |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I use both an Icom 7610 and 7300 and have used win4icom for a few years now.
The 6 virtual radios this software creates just makes life so easy - I like to run both JTDX (sometimes multiple instances) and WSJT-X at the same time and doing this with win4icom is just so easy.
The radio control functionality is also first class as is the spectrum scope functionality.
Just too many features to mention here but the program has performed flawlessly for a long time and the support from Tom is great.
You really need to give this software a try
Cheers
Paul - vk4ma |
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| W8PP |
Rating:      |
2021-08-17 | |
| Great Rig Control Program |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| The best $60 I've spent in a long time and love the way the software integrates with my IC-7300 and IC-7610. I use the "32bit version" for the 7610 and the "64 bit version" for the 7300. I have the suite working flawless with the rigs, WSJT-X,JT-alert,N3FJP logging program and SDRuno with never any glitches. I used many rig control programs over the years, but this beats them all IMHO. The customer support is the best I've ever gotten! I've asked Tom some dumb questions while setting up the 2 rigs, and he always gotten back to me with a solution. You won't be disappointed the software and the support! |
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| NP2KW |
Rating:    |
2020-03-18 | |
| Good, but could be great. |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
First my ratings: 1-5 (best)
1. Appearnce = 4
2. Functionality = 3
3. Dependability = 2
4. Ease of Use = 2
I ran into this software looking for something else and gave it a try, thanks to it's full featured free trial, that gets a 5!
1. This is truly good looking software. I really enjoy the aspect that the visial impact it gives you nearly replicates that of almost looking at your own radio, with the added benefit that EVERYTHING your radio does, is right there a mouse click away, without putting greasy fingerprints on your Icom's screen. It's truly almost like looking directly at your radio. Why a 4? The main screen cannot be adjusted to any size to fit your screen, and if you have multiple screens running, and after fitting them as best it allows you to, when you restart the program, you'll have to do it again, every single time, and if you shut down the pc, you'll have to restart every program you had to download, and setup some, not all, of the software again, starting with com0com and down the line.
2, 3 and 4 .... This software gives you 6 virtual radios, meaning you can run all your softwares in the backround, all with simultaneous connection to your rig using this as the backbone. If you don't like to read, are ill tempered and short of patience, leave this alone, there's multiple software (total 4 + W4I = 5) that you must download and setup for this to get going, to then go back to all of your pre existing softwares, and change all of their settings plus new ones too. I personally, wouldn't want (or need) my contest software running with anything other than itself connected directly to my radio, and N1MM is rendered useless for CW unless you have or buy a WinKeyer if you install and setup W4I, and it keeps the com port hostage if its running or not. This goes for all your other programs too. So they will not be able to run on their own with any setting as long as this is installed and present in your system running thru com0com, OmniRig, and Virtual Cables. To me that's too many of unneeded connections to possibly go wrong during a contest.
But again, I do like it, it's a supperb CAT software, and excellent SWL features too. But For DX-ing and Contesting, it requires logging and/or contesting software to run with it. That's just adding a lot more mouseclicks to me. But then again, it's classified here as "non-logging" software, as advertised. Thanks Tom, I'll be on the lookout for new releases!! |
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| G3UCQ |
Rating:      |
2020-02-22 | |
| A great addition to my ham radio experience. |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Having thought long and hard whether I needed Win4IcomSuite I eventually bought it and boy am I glad I did.
Not only does Win4IcomSuite control my IC-7610 brilliantly it also provides other options.
For instance, allowing me to run WSJT-X, HRD Logbook, CWSkimmer, HRD's DM780 etc. all at the same time using the virtual radios.
The panadapter created by Tom, VA2FSQ, works extremely well with spots showing above some signals.
I recently requested Tom to add a CW monitor level control and this has been done along with a switch for USB IF/AF when using CWSkimmer or not. He listens to users and responds.
A great addition to my ham radio experience. |
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| N3HKN |
Rating:     |
2019-12-13 | |
| Full Featured 7300 Transceiver Manager |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
Works very well. Almost complete control of the 7300, including power on/off. No program crashes and no contamination of Windows10. Updates and support very good. Polite and complete. The MANY features of the 7300 are all layed out on your screen which then illustrates how extensive the 7300 transceiver process are. It takes awhile to locate some functions but they are there. Add in the DX database, etc.. stuff and it is a top level manager of the most popular transceiver on the market.
The program also manages more than the 7300. Go to the web site for the latest set of supported radios and features. |
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| KX2T |
Rating:      |
2019-12-12 | |
| Outstanding! |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
I had tried Tom's software about a year ago but between selling our home and then moving to another state and setting things up just never got around to the purchase of it but have done that now, glad I did! I use a 7610 and I like the fact that you can have two very large screens open not like Icoms software that it seems fixed, does everything the Icom software does except when it come to using the 7610 as a server but I didn't buy the radio for that. I like the ability to play with other types of software like N1MM+ and other programs which you don't have with the Icom software at all so for in shack use it blows the Icom one away. Easy to get working and lots of support which Icom doesn't really give you.
I use this software allot now since my display screen on the 7610 has gone mustang for the second time and it makes operating the radio from my mouse a snap, well worth the $50 price for admission! |
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