A SIMPLE PANADAPTER SOLUTION
As good as it is (read about it here), it lacks what many people want these days - a nice colourful scope and waterfall. Of course you could always add an external sdr receiver and share the antenna between it and the IC-7100, but then you'd run the risk of blowing your SDR's front end when you transmit, so you'd have to find a solution to that little problem.
Wouldn't it be much nicer though if the IC-7100 had an IF-OUT port on the back? Well sadly, it doesn't - but you can add one and you'll be pleased to hear that it's quite a simple task as long as you're okay making some soldering connections inside your radio (don't worry - they're very easy to do).
SDR-KITS offer a range of Panoramic Adapter Tap boards to fit most radios and the one for the IC-7100 is the PAT150M. The kit I purchased was the cheapest at £12 which is basically, the pcb and nothing else! What I should have bought is the pcb and one of their fitting kits which provides you with a length of coax terminated with a chassis-mounted SMA socket.
Without the fitting kit, I had to use an SMA-SMA lead that I had spare, which meant the connector would be floating at the back of the radio - no big deal, but if I was to do it again I'd definitely buy the fitting kit.
To do the job, you'll need the PAT V board, an SMA lead (or the official fitting kit), some double-sided tape, a small ring-terminal, some solder and ideally, a hot-glue gun.
The first job is to remove the top and bottom covers of the IC-7100 which is a simple task involving unscrewing 6 screws on each cover (they're all the same size).
Looking at the photos below, you will quickly recognise where the PAT V has to be located. It goes underneath the radio onto the main board and fits over the area where there's 10 large soldered connection in a circle as shown in the image below. You can also see in this diagram the other locations we'll be connecting to...
Knowing that I would have cable passing over some nearby connections, I also added an extra piece of 3M tape to make sure no stray wires came in contact (yes, I know there should be no stray bits, but better safe than sorry).
When you're ready to fix the PAT V board into place, make sure that the far two solder connections of the ten remain showing and align the board to match the image above (note I have drawn a blue line to help).
With the board in place, you can make up a wire to bridge the connections shown in the image (the single red wire).
Then route your coax from the rear of the IC-7100 to the PAT V board and solder into place as shown in the image. This was my chosen route, but there are many options available to you depending on where you want to connect your external receiver. There's even a route to the front of your IC-7100, but it's trickier.
The other ends of these wires go to the PAT V board as shown below. Finally, make a small link wire to bridge the PATV board to the third connection.
That's it! Reassemble the radio and test. I used an SDRPLAY RSPDX for my external receiver, but you can use any similar product. The software I started with was SDR UNO but I also tested it with SDR CONSOLE and both were spot on!
Once it's up and running, you can use the external receiver as just that (an extra receiver) or you can use it to provide you with a panadapter for the IC-7100's using Omni-Rig to keep the radio and the external receiver's frequency locked in together.
There are a few panadapter options out there for the 7100 but I reckon this is the most simple to fit. And it's cheap too!
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