Voltage booster

With my new ic-7000 now settled in and the bluetooth headset and modded fist mic working together I am now looking at sorting out the 12v side of things.

You see, the trouble with the 7000 is that it won't run full power with a battery, no matter how short the cables or how fresh the battery is. So, I have been trialing an MFJ voltage booster. This has given a noticeable boost to my rf output, however the product is not as well designed as another unit from TG Electronics, this unit which is rated to 40 amps, is a sealed unit with no nasty binding terminals. I can hook it up with my Powerpole connectors in line with a marine isolator which is siting on the shelf. I can then flick the switch for 13.8 volts!

Holiday update

Hi all, not done much blogging for a while. I'm just coming to the end of my annual holiday. I have been using my Superantennas MP-10! Worked IZ on 6, AO on 10 as well as a french station. Also worked Italy on 20m. Made a 2m contact to the IoW and most recent was contact with 2E0UOO/m on 10m.

My next outing will be on the 23rd to Woldingham where I will be on 2 and 70cms. Others will be on HF.

I have also been active on sat nights on 28.5 9pm on the Home Counties Net. Do drop me a line if you want a sked.

James m0bov

The next step was to mod the mic. We purchased kits from http://www.7000mic.com/ , we ordered replacement mics so as not to risk the original mics.

It went quite well with Derek GWHK's help, we found that we could run the mic gain back to 40% with compression at about 4. I had to up the gain on the BT system to balance it out.

I have now received the Mini 8 patch leads I ordered from Moonraker, this means I can now have the SWR meter in line and run my 110W 2M amp. When I want to take the amp off line, I bridge the connection using a double SO239 adapter.

Now that the antenna and audio are sorted, i then needed to turn my attention to the power source, that's coming up in part 3!!

>>Major revamp for HF Mobile installation<<


Well, I have reinstalled and renewed pretty much everything, in fact its been the biggest change since I have been /m! In summary:

New rig!
New antenna lead
New mobile whip
New SWR meter
Modified IC-7000 mic
Outstanding items are replacing caravan battery with upgraded 85amp unit and fitting Bose Gold Plated connectors to matching Gold Plated Lugs (8AWG cable!)
MFJ Battery Booster possible
May fit 7" TFT Screen into sunvisor
Re fit onto new piece of Conti board and secure all cables


I think the best thing is to split this posting into three parts, firstly I'll deal with the initial issues. Now being a computer tech I am (I think!) quite good at logicly planning things and getting all the bits I need. So, with the arrival of the new rig, I knew I needed the seperational cable, fine got that. I knew my custom headmount would fit and I knew I needed to shorten the DC cable so got a spare.

Radio arrived, wrong DC cable, ok so got it on back order. Got rig on bench, tested Bluetooth and fist mic, all great so far.

Chucked it into car, got on air, great and then tried 70cms, ok this is where the fine starts. I was sure I had checked the meter before setting out, but it was like 2:1. Ok so tried another antenna, about the same....oh here we go.....!

So it seemed worse on higher freq, so a started shortening the antenna, but this only improved it a small amount and made 2M worse. To top it all, the readings seemed to move about when i was moving the antenna cable. Also, the output was not very high, it seemed the voltage was only about 12v or just below.

I took it to a friend to have it checked, we found putting a dummy load on the duplexer gave a high reading, so we removed the duplexer, but still had a SWR on some patch leads. So replaced this but it still was a problem when we added the duplexer. So this seemed at fault, plus I had by now butchered the mobile whip!

We then tried another SWR meter, this showed 1:1 on my newly purchased replacement antenna! The problem was not the duplexer but RF getting into the SWR meter due to the high field strength!!! I have now purchased a Revex meter and see how that goes.

One thing we noticed was the muffled and boxy audio from the fist mic, so that was the next thing to sort out..........In part 2!

Well, finally I purchased the IC-7000, I've wanted one since they first released it so 3 years ago but got put off by the fact that it does'nt have an SWR meter on all the bands and no internal voltage meter. Well, I have got round both problems now and what with my local 70cms repeater being back on air, and my superb Bluetooth hands free system, I decided to go for it!!

I chose to have the TV mod and wide TX mod applied by the dealer. I also purchased the seperation cable and extra DC cable. I got sent the wrong cable so I am still waiting for it, but otherwise its now up and running in the car.

I did have a few early issues, the stock mic is "ok" but not great, so I am looking at getting another mic and modding this. Also i found the S Meter to be very lazy on 2 and 70cms being reluctant to go above S9. I am told this is by design, I also found the notched tuning dial fiddly to disengage. Otherwise on air reports are great, I tried it at full power in the car, no immediate problems came to light except the output power was only 50%. However I put my battery on charge and it was only at 60% charge!!

I have looked at getting a battery booster to dial up the voltage to get max power out. I may well end up doing this in the near future. But I'd like to test the rig out on a fully charged battery first. Its worth noting the 75Amp caravan battery is over 2 years old now and normally by now I am having to replace it anyway.

Well, having now enjoyed the TalkSafe for a few weeks and happy with it, I decided to fix the unit into my system. I velcroed it onto the top of the AT-180 Tuner. I applied Farnell cable wrap to the input and speak cables running to the unit.

I also gave the whole system a wipe over with some AF foam cleaner and AF lint free cloths. I also had a bit of a brain wave, regarding the IC-7000 and my 2M amp. More on this later!!

Well, here is a Talksafe update. It arrived from W&S without the mic cable, after complaining we were told it was out of stock. Anyway, tried to pair it with my Sony and Moto headset, nothing. So, it was returned to Talksafe, it should never have been sold since it needed an upgrade and should have been sent back to the manufacture.

So, I got my replacement and it paired ok, however the headsets don't re pair easily and the audio can be very muffeled. So I would suggest the Motorola H350 or H500 headset, these seem to work ok.

Now I have a replacement cable and working Talksafe I am very pleased and I can now quickly get onto the radio. I still use the dash speak when parked up, but I can use the headset for audio when on the move.

Hoping to order the TalkSafe Bluetooth adapter for my 706 very soon, should solve the problem of not only handsfree, but not having to connect the external speaker each time. Whilst the speaker is located in the center of the dash and is a geniune Icom speaker, its a bit messy with the cables and is a pain to hook up each time.