Tim,
your pros and cons on both rigs are more or less valid, I would say.
I would ask myself: much contesting or not? You have read at Dons site about
the value of the spectrum display, it has become adamant for me during
contests (finding free spots, not missing callers when s&p, checking if band
is open/crowded).
Here in Germany the ProII has not officially been discontinued but is "not
available until further notice". My guess is that Icom is waiting for the
demand in ProIIIs and decide then whether to continue to build the ProII or
not. But you will most likely get an excellent deal with a used rig now.
The two large tuning knobs on the FT-1k are surely nice and convenient. But I
have never used them in any RTTY contest. When working DX - yes, of course.
But you can do equally well with the Icom. I put the RX VFO on the DXs freq,
and select my TX spot with the main dial. So I can use RIT if the DX drifts a
little and select my TX spot while listening on dual watch. It's easy and
straight forward, but you have to have one hand on the balance control all
the time. I work only CW and RTTY, YMMV with SSB.
Plan to go multi/multi with your rig? A strong point for the FT-1K, although
the merits for large signal rejection are exagerated IMO.
The image rejection on the 756ProII is nothing to be proud about with a rig at
that price (all tests show that, I have experienced it myself). I have not
played much with the ProIII but I hear it's better there (as Icom claims).
With either rig two Dunestar (or similiar) band filters are necessary when
going multi/multi.
You will not be able to monitor RTTY/Packet at the same time (really
simultaneously), you will have to switch modes. I am not 100% sure but I
think the packet output is disconnected when not switched to packet mode.
The ProII lacks the packet interface of the Yaesu, but when you use the
soundcard both for RTTY and Packet it doesn't matter much anyway, unless you
plan to use a TNC for packet.
So far my 2 cents. I have to admit that I am biased towards Icom...
73,
Ekki, DF4OR
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