FIELD DAY RADIO

ICOM IC-7400

I've been thinking that it'd be great to have a radio for "Field Day" events but I didn't want to spend a fortune on it, so I looked at a few different models including the FT857 and FT-897. My friend had an 897 for sale but it had the dreaded 'vertical lines' on the LCD display. So I looked at other 897's but there's just not that many around and I'd have to buy a tuner too.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I opted for the ICOM IC-7400 and started a search on eBay and found a few over-priced options mainly from dealers, so I decided to do my usual thing and saved a search.

It didn't take long before the perfect radio appeared and because of my saved search, I was notified the moment it appeared. Boom! I clicked that BuyNow and got the perfect radio at the perfect price.

The radio is described as "Mint Condition" but there's little other information about it. When people barely write anything in their eBay descriptions it always worries me, but I'm paying through PayPal so I've got a good degree of protection and if the radio arrives with any problems, I will just ship it straight back. To ignore this potential bargain would have been foolhardy.

The IC-7400 was a superb radio in its day and in addition to the HF and 6M it has 2m. All at 100W, so that's perfect for when I eventually upgrade my licence. And it will be a handy rig to have on Field Day events for any other club members to play with when I'm taking a break.

I love and adore my FT-818 - it's perfect when I'm on my own up in the hills with a lightweight resonant wire antenna, but if I take it on a Field Event, in a less than perfect location (as I did recently on our club's POTA day), it showed up some weaknesses with its 5W on HF and 2.5W on VHF. I think having my full 10W on both bands would have made all the difference.

Apparently, early models developed a TX fault and the LCD backlight failed. Fortunately, the radio I have bought is a late model which isn't affected. The rig is very well thought of by most operators on eHam and having spoken to people on the relevant forums, I was comfortable with my choice. No radio is perfect, but for £400 I think I may have got a real good buy.

I also like the look of the rig! I know that's silly, but to me it is one of the buying parameters. For example, I love the look of the FT-897D but couldn't live with an 857 even though it does all the same things in a smaller package. The IC-7400 is a nice, chunky looking thing and I much prefer having extra height to extra width in a field-radio.

The display just couldn't be better - it's big, bold and very clear! There's lots of traditional buttons and dials and it looks like the sort of thing that you can just 'get on with' straight away. It's also got a good ATU built-in which is very handy. Obviously it won't tune a piece of wet string, but it'll certainly be good enough to fine-tune the rough ends of the resonant dipoles and EFHW's that I use.

It's not very energy efficient, so it'll need mains or a good chunky battery in the field, but that's fine. I'm not going to be chucking it into a rucksack to go playing SOTA with it - it weighs 9kg, lol.

More when it arrives!