There were some interesting discussions on last night’s net including K6HMD Eric’s issue he’s been experiencing with his iCom IC-7600 transceiver. It seems that Eric was attempting to set up FM split mode operations to access the K6TZ 6 meter repeater when he began seeing unexplained signals every 100 Khz at the same amplitude on the rigs spectrum analyzer. Even changing bands didn’t help. After a fair amount of troubleshooting Eric finally opted to reset the rig to factory specifications and the problem was solved, no more weird signals. Shackmaster Dave (K6HWN) offered a very plausible cause for the anomaly, while Eric was trying to set up split mode operations he may have pushed a button on the rig enabling the crystal calibrator. The calibrator would emit signals at specific intervals to calibrate the rigs frequency output by. Eric’s perusal of the operating manual didn’t offer up any information about a crystal calibrator being on-board the rig so he’ll contact the manufacturer. Tune in to the next Technical Mentoring and Elmering Net and hopefully learn the answer to this puzzle!
Other discussions involved HF noise and troubleshooting, automatic gain control and signal to noise ratios.
All club members and visitors are encouraged to check in to the Technical Mentoring and Elmering Net each week and join in with questions and /or answers to and contribute the edification of new and experienced hams alike.
If you missed the net, you can still listen to the whole thing or any of our other nets. Just visit the SBARC audio archives at http://audio.sbarc.org.
I put in a email to ICOM Technical support to see if they’ll tell us what magic button combo activate this “feature”. My guess is along the same lines of K6HWM’s – I somehow activated a factor calibration system for the spectrum scope. We’ll have to see what ICOM says. Stay tuned, same Bat time same Bat Channel!