I still don't have my Icom IC-746PRO boxed up to send for repair — and it looks like I won't have to!
I bought new boxes to double box the thing a couple of days ago, and was planning to box it this evening. As I cleared out the stuff around it, I realized something I hadn't tried.
The problem with the rig was this massive distortion in the transmitted audio. It did not vary with mic gain, but power out. It wasn't a mic problem, and I assumed it was something inside the rig that was causing it.
Thinking about the symptions again — I realized that one possible input that could bring in audio distortion was through my recently installed MFJ TNC cable. Essentially, the cable brings in an audio line into the TNC and I had planned to run it on RTTY. As it turns out, the cable worked fine — except my software would not/could not put the transceiver into transmit mode from the keyboard. I could do it manually, and it would transmit RTTY and Morse, no problem. But the ability to get it to transmit via keyboard command just didn't work.
The cable plugs into ACC 1 in the back, a DIN plug that has audio lines in and out, plus the PTT line. The audio goes directly into the rig and bypasses the gain controls and audio processing and the built-in audio adjustments for transmit audio.
Hmmmm …. I removed the cable from the back of the rig, fired it up and tested it out — not a bit of distortion! Gone! Vanished!! I was not only elated, I was — still am — on cloud nine! Of course the service guy doesn't get a rig to bill me for, but my old trusty 746PRO can stay in service.
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UNIDEN BCT-15. I continue to be more impressed by the performance and features of my new Uniden scanner. I'm getting the hang of how you program it and set it up, and I'm embarrassed to admit that its not nearly as difficult as it seemed at first. New terminology, new way of doing it, yeah.
Like many new amateur transceivers today, the BCT-15 will ID the CTCSS or DCS tones used on any memory channel you have. Our main police dispatch frequency is now shared with a fire department over in Southern Indiana. The FD upgraded its radio equipment and repeater a few years ago, and frankly, iif they were an Amateur repeater system, they wouldn't be allowed operate. The FD signal is nearly as loud as the local police repeater. There are numerous times when the local police have trouble communicating thanks to the activity by the Indiana FD. Each uses a separate CTCSS tone, so they don't hear one another, but that doesn't prevent the Indiana FD from blocking signals trying to get from local police vehicles back to the repeater.
It's got some really nice features I'm already using. For example, it has two levels of lock out on a memory — temporary and permanent. The temporary lock out only lasts until you turn the rig off. When you turn it back on, that locked out channel is active again. It's a great idea, I don't know how many things I missed on a scanner due to having a channel locked out; it used to happen to newsroom scanners all the time.
I'm really starting to like the dynamic nature of how it manages memories. Instead of having 1000 channels in 10 banks of 100, you can make up more than 100 different groups of memories. And unlike conventional memory banks, you don't waste memories. Each group (or “bank” to use the old terminology) is only as big as the number of frequencies you assign it.
This allows you to have a group with all your policie/fire/EMS, another with just ham, aircraft another, etc. You can really narrow your scanning down to focus on the service you're interested in.
A good example of why the dynamic memory management is an improvement: A friend of mine bought her hubby a new 1000 channel Radio Shack scanner. She asked me to program it after he tried and was a bit intimidated by it. He wanted it set up so he had police/fire/EMS in one bank, utilities in another, etc. He wanted it all broken down by memory banks.
I did that, but it wasted memory. Bank 1 was police/fire/EMS, and when it was all done, roughly half of the bank of 100 memories was filled. The rest were blank. I set up Bank 2 for public utilities, and additional banks for Amateur, business, etc.
Banks were only in blocks of 100, so the other memories that were not filled with frequencies were a waste. You couldn't use them for other services unless you wanted to wreck the frequency classifications.
The scanner had plenty of memory to spare, but the BCT-15's system is a big improvement since there's no wasted memories dedicated to predefined memory banks.
The scanner will also monitor for fire department pages — thats' right, once I determine the tone pairs used, I should be able to set it to alert whenever the fire departments in the county are dispatched.
So far, I've only scratched the surface of the rigs abilities. It's a super whiz-bang trunking scanner too, but since there's no trunking done by local police, that capability isn't really something I'm using.
The scanner also will interface with a GPS unit. It has a “Bear Tracker” feature than will alert you to what it believes is a nearby police transmission. It can automatically scan its preset library of frequencies (sorted by state) and it will record the active frequencies it finds so you can review them later. The only thing it doesn't do is make coffee, and I'm not sure it doesn't do that.
The manual for this rig is comprehensive; almost too much so. I found a simpler re-write of the manual on a web site devoted to the BCT-15, and it was MUCH easier to read and understand. The cool part is how linked together the terms are — when it mentions one step, there's a link to it. This web site was the real key for learning the secret of the rig's programming.
That's enough for now, I'm going to spend some quality time with my resurrected 746PRO.
73,
de KY4Z … dit dit