[SCCC] IC7800 Impressions

[W1HIJCW at aol.com]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I apologize if you receive more than one copy of the email, but I went 
through my address book and I may have picked up your name more than once.

Through the courtesy of Icom America, I have had the opportunity to use a 
7800 for the past few days over the New Year's weekend. While I did not do any 
rigorous testing, I did spend quite a few hours in front of the radio (probably 
10 to 15) and I thought I would share with you my subjective impressions.

First of all, let me say that I have never used a radio that was as good a 
receiver as this one. Period. Now let me provide some specifics. My normal radio 
is a Yaesu FT990 and the antenna here is a Butternut vertical, roof mounted 
with the base at about 30 feet. Doing A/B switching with the 990, I found that 
the raw sensitivity of the 7800 was no different from the 990. BUT (and this 
is a big but) the ability to listen comfortably to signals was so different as 
to be almost indescribable. Almost all the listening (and definitely all the 
transmitting I did) was on CW.

One of my friends and customers who has a 7800 made a comment to me that this 
was the first radio he has ever owned where the "DSP really works." Now I 
know what he means. There are three controls (by the way an independent set for 
each receiver) that have an incredible effect on the ability to listen to and 
extract intelligence from a signal. They are "Noise Reduction," a "Noise 
Blanker," and a continuously variable AGC attack time (AGC-VR). In various 
combinations, I found I could use them to literally reduce white noise to a level that 
made it essentially disappear. My QTH is not particularly noisy, but neither 
is it super quiet, being a typical suburban setting with lots of neighbors 
generating various amounts of EMI. If you can't get rid of 90% of the noise with 
this radio, I can't imagine anything that would do a better job.

The DSP filtering is based on that which is in the 756 Pro 2 and Pro 3, but 
is so much better in implementation that it's almost another animal entirely.

The second receiver and "dual watch" capability is excellent and each 
receiver has a fully independent set of DSP controls, filter settings, RF gain, AF 
gain, squelch, etc., etc. In short the radio truly implements two receivers in 
one box. In addition to everything else, there is a variable preselector filter 
implemented for each receiver, but since the bands were not particularly 
crowded, I did not have the chance to evaluate its effectiveness.

Use of the radio was pretty much intuitive and I only had to go to the manual 
a few times to find specific settings. I am not a spectrum display kind of 
operator, so I can't evaluate that feature, except to say that it looks nice and 
has a greatly improved set of parameters compared with the one in the 756.

The display itself is eminently readable. I did not connect an external 
monitor to it at home, but I have seen that in other situations and it makes a 
wonderful option for operating.

Speaking of options, I explored a little bit the RTTY and PSK operation. 
Briefly put, it's a "piece of cake." I am not a digital operator, but I found that 
even without a keyboard, I could program a couple of transmit memories for 
the two modes and make contacts without any discernible effort. The setup 
without a keyboard is a bit awkward and requires quite a few button pushes to switch 
back and forth between displays and transmit memories, but on balance, I 
could make contest style contacts on RTTY ... and that's more than I can say for 
my own set up at home.

So "where the rubber meets the road" ... probably the best receiver I've ever 
heard. Better for a "rag chewer" than for a contester (at least this 
contester) because the control layout is not optimized for contesting.

Is it worth the price ... that's up to you. I won't be buying one simply 
because I can't justify in my own mind paying more for a radio than I did for my 
1999 Explorer a year ago. BUT, if you want to experience what real DSP can do 
in a radio, this is the one to have.

Thanks again to Icom for letting me use the radio for a few days. It 
certainly has raised my standards ...

73 de Bill, W1HIJ/6
aka FO8DX, FOOTE, Team NP4A, Team CO0US
Pina Colada Contest Club, KP2AA