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Reviews For: LDG MC-7610 Dual Analog Color Meter for IC-7610 Transceivers

Category: Third-party Equipment

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Review Summary For : LDG MC-7610 Dual Analog Color Meter for IC-7610 Transceivers
Reviews: 1MSRP: $179.99
Description:
This is an auxiliary dual meter that is intended to work with the external meter connector of an Icom IC-7610 transceiver. It has 2 analog meters that resemble the meters on the radio's display. One is for the main channel and the other is for the sub channel. Each meter is individually backlit by an adjustable color LED, powered by any 12 Vdc, 500ma source. The color and brightness controls are on the back panel. LDG Electronics Meters are fully assembled and calibrated. Features: Dual 3.5? Analog Meters Displays: S-Meter, RF power, SWR, etc. Color/Brightness adjustment for each Meter Voltage: 13.8 VDC +/-15% Current Draw: 500 mA Max Size: 8.0?x4.0?x4.0?, 200x100x100mm Weight: 1.5 pounds, 680 grams Cables for power and for connection to the transceiver are included. Rear Panel 3.5 mm jack for connecting to the IC-7610 Coaxial power connector On/off push switch main illumination brightness knob sub illumination brightness knob main illumination color knob sub illumination color knob
Product is in production
More Info: https://ldgelectronics.com/index.php/products/accessories/meters/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0014
AE7NM Rating: 2022-03-01
Looks Great, Not Very Useful Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This is great for those who like analog meters. It looks cool sitting on top of the radio. It doesn't necessarily add much utility to the tranceiver (see below). There are two meters on the front. On the back there is a 3.5 mm jack for connecting to the external meter output of the IC-7610. There is also a power connector. There is a button that toggles the power on the back. Also on the back, are 2 pairs of small knobs, one for each meter. One of each pair controls the illumination brightness for the associated meter. The other knob changes the color the illumination from blue to green to yellow to whitish to orange to red.
Note: You must connect power to the MC-7610, There seems to be an internal relay that disconnects the meters if the unit is off or unpowered. I expected that the meters would still work without the illumination power. Since this device is specific to the IC-7610, it would have been nice if a cable to obtain power from one of the IC-7610’s AUX jacks was included. The actual current draw measured less than 110 mA. at 14.5 V with the illumination at maximum.
The meters are 200 microamp full scale analog meters. They are nicely damped. There are no accessible calibration adjustments for the meters. You must use the calibration settings on the IC-7610’s menu.
The IC-7610 has some settings for the analog meter outputs (MENU, SET, Connectors, External Meter). The only External Meter Output settings that are actually functional in the current firmware release (1.30) are the Auto setting. The auto settings cause the analog meters to mirror the function of the meters on the radio’s digital display. That is, they show signal strength during receive and radio’s selected value during transmit. Setting the output for the sub meter to anything but Auto or S (which do the same thing on the sub meter) results in no output to the analog meter, ever. Selecting S for the main meter results no output during transmit; Anything else, except Auto, outputs nothing during receive and the auxiliary meter’s selected value during transmit. Unless ICOM changes things in a future release, the auxiliary settings are not much use for external analog meters. I set the main external meter setting to ALC and the sub meter to S.
On my setup I found that setting the auxiliary level on the radio at 63 percent worked well. I can see no really good way of calibrating this precisely. I just changed the setting until the two analog and display meters looked like they were reading the same as the meters on the IC-7610’s display.