Dear A1Club,
I'm relative new ham. Maybe some experienced hams have recommendation?
Started with Yaesu FT 890 and now on ICOM 7300. What is in your experience a good upgrade when considering CW??
For sure everybody has personal preference. Here is what I like for CW:
- I love good CW filters (like 300Hz) and I'm missing the Audio Peaking Filter from Yaesu when switching to ICOM that just has it in higher class.
- don't like relay clicks (particular on full QSK) or loud fan noise (IC 7300 is very noisy, but Yaesu seems to be not better. Any experience?).
- ICOM does not support IAMBIC A and the CW settings are limited (e.g. no Ultimatic). As I started with IAMBIC A I had to relearn on IAMBIC B what is a less optimal keying mode IMHO.
- CW decoder is not needed. It's nice to have, but my own copy gets bad if I look at screen of a decoder.
- Not CW related:
? - love Icom waterfall display and usability. Not need a auto "CW zero beat" as waterfall is good enough.
? - don't need much power, most the time I'm QRP and even for rare DX not going 50W. For bad band condition 30W is my sweet spot.
? - working mostly HF. Sadly 2m / 70cm missing on most modern (CW capable) transceivers?
? - love Japanese products for their quality
? - modes: I'm 100% CW in for active QSO. Only for testing Antenna or Homebrew use digi like WSPR or FT8. No SSB.
On Hamvention ICOM announced a "X60 Project". Any ideas what this could be? Some component indicate it could be high class transceiver (200w) what would be outside of my (money and power) budget :-) . Any rumors in Japan?
What is your preferred CW transceiver and why do you love it?
BEST 73 DE DJ1TF / JJ1QPB - Thomas
