Maybe the early 2000s.
Need to do some work to a few of the upstairs office rigs (usually run an IC-751A/R-71A or TS-440S/R-5000 pair there) so I began searching for a set of new(er) model twins - or something with a dual receiver.
What I ended up with is an R-75 and an IC-7200.
The R-75 integrates seamlessly with YaDD. I have it scanning the GMDSS frequencies. Eventually I'm going to throw a 1.8KHz and 500Hz accessory filter pair in the thing but it works good for this purpose as-is. The 7200 is a slick little rig. One USB cable to this PC and I'm up and running flrig/fldigi, wsjtx and so forth. Waiting on a cable to interface my AT-150 to it then I'll be fully automatic vis band changes. Since it doesn't have an RX Ant Out (as do the Kenwoods, Drakes, JRCs and other Icoms I use) I have to come up with a way to share the active antenna while protecting the receiver's front end. Bought an MFJ-1708 and a receiver protector so I'll try that combo and measure the amount of RF on the receiver port at full power. Should it be above 1mV I'll look into the DX Engineering product.
Sucks they didn't include a RX Out/In connection like they do on so many other of their rigs. There's no space on the rear panel to add the jacks, either. Aside from that it's a great little rig. Not a 7610 or FTDX101MP by any means but perfectly usable in the secondary operating spot.
Reply With Quote
