Icom 2730

Ok, so me beloved Kenwood V71 radios are going deaf, it's a known issue you can research for yourself.  So until I purchase parts and see if I can do the detialed solder job to repair them, I purchased an Icom 2730 with the black screen. The black is a bit extra, but I really liked the look of the display and I am not disappointed with it at all.

 Now, the problem is Icom in a stroke of both genius and ignorance at the same time DOES NOT include a single piece of mounting hardware...not even screws.  They leave it up to you to decide how you are going to mount the radio and then purchase the mounting hardware that fits your install.  I get it, vehicles today are so difficult to find ways to install radios.  No use purchasing a radio with hardware just to find you can't use any of it and still have to purchase what you need.  Maybe a better way would have been to make packages with each type of mounting, but even with in that I see ways to mix and match, so I don't blame them.  What I do think they could have done is included the M2.6 screws for the control head, those little buggers are unobtainable around my area. So what does one do to mount the control head?

 Well, I modified it of course!

An M3 screw if just large enough that you can drill out the brass inserts and re-thread them to M3.  Those I can source locally.

I removed the screws from the back panel of the control head and removed it.  There are no components of any kind mounted to it, so off to the drill press I went.  Being careful to not drill through the entire panel, I wrapped tape around my #40 bit to create a bit of a depth stop.  Then a quick few turns of a M 3.0 x 0.50 tap and there you go.

I used two pieces of 1" x 1/8" aluminum bar, drilled it to mount to the back of my TS-480HX control head and the IC-2730 control head.  Now they both sit nicely in the truck.

As far as the radio goes, it is just a pain enough to be worth getting a programming cable and software, RT Systems is what I'm using, but there are others.  The Banks in this rig work nicely for keeping groups of frequencies for different areas you travel together.  You can even scan a different group on each side of the rig.  If you like monitoring the few public service channels that aren't encrypted, you could keep those on one side and the ham stuff on the other.

 Reports on the air give good feedback on the audio and RX seems very good on this rig.  I was hearing repeater systems nearly 70mi away here in flat land IL with some noise on the mobiile, but that's pretty good.  I'm certain I would not be able to transmit into those systems reliably.

Overall, I am pleased with the rig.  I will know more after I take a trip or two and give it a workout while mobile. 

 

 

I have now made a trip with the radio mobile and love it, maybe more than my V71 now that I'm getting into the age of wearing glasses to see small print.  Above you see the fcontrol head above my Kenwood 480HX in the dark, just look at that beautiful display, the black background is excellent at night. Use the auto dim function.  It brightens when you press a key, but dims back to the auto dim setting after a moment.

Below is the method I used to mount the control head onto the control head of my 480HX, this works great.  I can pull the two control lines from the heads and remove both as an assembly from the truck, and they both tilt at the same angle on the mount.  Just too easy.  The real trick is getting the correct length of metric screws so you don't extend into the housing and damage internal components of the control head, measure carefully, calipers are your friend.  Measure twice, and then twice again, you don't want to run a screw into a circuit card inside your new radio control head.