Icom RC-28 adventure.....

 

My last post was about my new Icom RC-28 external VFO that I purchased for my 65th birthday. At the time I had not connected it to the radio as I was busy with some home renovations. Once I could sit down and give the new RC-28 a spin I connected it to the front USB port on my Icom 7610 radio. I was very pleased to see that it worked without any issues....so I thought. When I powered down the radio that was when things went south. The Icom 7610 was stuck in power-down mode. I tried to tap the power button and then hold the power button but this did not shut the radio down. I had to turn off the power supply to the radio to finally power-down the radio.

I thought maybe it was a one-off and I powered the radio on again without issue and then attempted to turn it off. Once again the radio was stuck in power-down mode, so I turned the power supply off. Just to make sure it was not a radio issue that happened to show itself at the same time as I plugged in the RC-28 I removed the RC-28 from the Icom USB port. Without the RC-28 connected the radio powered up and powered down without issue, I was hoping there was not an issue with the new RC-28. There is an Icom 7610 group on Groups.IO that I am a member of so I searched there regarding this power-down issue. One suggestion was to make sure my RC-28 has the latest software update. Up to that point, I did not know you could update its software. I downloaded from Icom the latest RC-28 software and connected my RC-28 to my PC USB port and ran the software. I was told I was running the latest software. Next was to make sure the Icom 7610 rig was updated with the latest software. Now this I know for sure is not the case, version 1.42 is mainly a pre-distortion update. Also known as DPD used for SSB and not CW and being I am 100% CW I felt it was a download that was not needed. Now having said that on Icom's update page, it did indicate there were a few minor fixes. In my opinion, my radio was working and I did not see any need for any minor fixes...well until now. 

I downloaded and loaded the latest Icom firmware and it made no difference the radio was still not turning off. Another suggestion from the group was to remove the LAN cable from the rear of the radio. Now for me to remove anything from the rear of the radio is a big undertaking. But it did get me thinking about removing cables so I tried removing the key and headphones from the radio but with the same results failing to shut down. I was thinking for the time being I may have to unplug the RC-28 before turning off the radio as when I did this the Icom 7610 shut down without issue.
As I was plugging my Key back into the front of the radio I noticed a very small device plugged into the other USB port on the radio. It was a Logitech Unifying receiver for my mouse, this allowed me to click on the waterfall of the Icom 7610. I used a wireless mouse as it presented less clutter on the desktop but truth be told I rarely used it. I removed this device and ran a start/shut down again with the radio and low and behold all was fine. 

Problem solved and I must admit I was relieved to have finally found what the issue was. I posted my results on the Icom 7610 Groups.io site. I was informed that on such and such a page in the manual it does say the USB ports do not support wireless receivers. I had no issue with the wireless mouse but once the RC-28 was introduced so was an issue.

Approaching a milestone.

 As you get older time sure does seem to fly past and once you retire (in my case) time seems to be moving at a warp speed. Both my wife and I just can't believe how fast each week Friday is upon us once again. In a few weeks, I will be the ripe old age of 65! Funny when I was in my 30's I thought 50 was old. Now in my 60s' I'm looking at the late 70's as being up there age-wise. I have been blessed with good health all my life. I have never been in the hospital overnight, had zero major illness and my overall health is considered excellent. For this, I am very thankful and never take my health for granted. 

Since this is a special birthday year I thought I would buy myself something nice ham radio related. Now I am retired and on a fixed income so there is no Elecraft K4 in the picture for me. I have a great Icom 7610 and I very much enjoy CW contesting. I have been toying with the idea of operating single operator 2 vfo or SO2V as it is called. The Icom 7610 allows me to operate its VFO A and B on the same band or on separate bands. This is very handy for contesting and I have tried it and became frustrated as you only have one VFO knob on the 7610 and if you forget to select VFO B and spin the dial you lose your VFO A spot. The idea with SO2V is that VFO A is your run VFO and VFO B is your search and pounce VFO. What I needed was a separate VFO physical knob that operated VFO B. 

Icom has the RC-28 and it always seemed a bit pricey to me but heck it's my big 65th so I took the plunge and purchased it. All Canadian dealers had the RC-28 on back order and the U.S. dealer had the Canadian dollar (and a few other reasons) and the shipping cost was just too much to spend. I did read on some of the IO Groups I follow of operators purchasing them on eBay from sellers in Japan. I looked into it and they were in stock also with shipping, and tax and the cost of the RC-28 it was basically the same cost as the Canadian dealers who were out of stock.
I ordered it and in less than a week it was at my door, brand new in a sealed Icom box. Happy Birthday to me! In my next post, I will be revealing my adventure connecting it to the Icom 7610!
 

ARRL CW DX contest was a no go!

 

I had to use the snowblower to dig out the antenna base

 I had to take a pass on this year's ARRL CW DX contest I was not happy about it but I wanted to play it smart. I did not want to be looking back and saying "I should have sat this one out". Here was the issue, here in the Maritimes we had an incoming snowstorm which is not an issue. This one had the potential of freezing rain and high winds. On Friday the storm had passed and we did not get much freezing rain and the Hustler 4BTV was fine. Around 9 am on Friday, the winds began to pick up, and then there were powerful gusts of wind. These were the speed of the maximum rating for the antenna and were not forecast to be this strong. I have the luxury of being able to take the vertical antenna down which I did. The plan was to put it back up on Saturday if the winds died down, come Saturday they had lessened but not by much and on Sunday another storm was headed our way with wind gusts of 90km or more. 

Removing ice coating

 With heavy snow, winds and freezing rain, I made the decision then and there to sit this contest out. I did not want to put the antenna up for Saturday to then again take it down for Sunday. Besides I was checking the solar weather and Saturday was showing a Kp5 along with the Bz index dipping into the negatives. Ultimately, I did not want a damaged antenna for the sake of one contest knowing the potential weather that was coming. On Sunday evening we had lots of freezing rain and I am very glad I left the antenna down along with winds peaking again at 90 Km.

Seems Clusters have been possibly hacked.

 

DX Heat Cluster

One of my morning routines is to check on the clusters to see what's happening. I check DX Heat, DX Summit, and Holy Cluster. This morning, I noticed the same station was being spotted over and over nonstop. Holy Cluster was not as bad as the other two, but it still had issues with continued repeat spots. I noticed on Holy Cluster the same station is spotted on SSB, CW and Digi all at the same time. A sure sign of a hack I believe.  I'm not sure how long this has been going on, as I just checked this morning.