Steve, and others interested in this topic,

I guess, in many respects, it has always beyen that way, see
Steve's comments at the end of this message.  All of us, to some
degree or another, have worked out ways to operate our gear from
day one.  Shoot, I remember how hard I thought it was trying to
get the school's SX99 on my frequency by holding down the key.
Half the time, I ended up on harmonics all over the various bands
but I eventually learned how to do it.  Even labeling crystals
wasn't that easy back then.  I used to keep all my crystals in
separate places on my desk, on the window  ledge next to the desk,
on top of the transmitter, next to the receiver, in the right
front hand part of my operating desk drawer, and sometimes even in
my pockets, in order to have quick access to them.  When I pulled
the Drake TR4 transceiver out of the box, I was 14 years young,
and a friend, who wasn't a ham, spent hours that evening and into
the night reading from the manual to help me get things set up.
Later, another non ham, helped me take the VFO knob off and pull
the flat skirt away from the front of the radio and label it with
strips of dymo tape cut into thirds lengthwise, making them skinny
strips in order to leave some space between individual KHz
markings on the skirt dial itself, enabling me to read 1 KHz at a
time.  It was his idea, not mine, nor had I talked to any other
blind hams, like we can here, for such a tip.  I got so good at it
back then, moving around the bands I mean, a friend I used to work
in Omaha locally, could not believe how close I got to frequencies
he would call out and ask me to go to.  He had a Collins KWM2 and
he said I was within 200 Hz each time I got on a frequency he
would have me go to.  That was a lot of work trying to learn all
that stuff.  It didn't always work either.  By that I mean, the
TR4 had 4 band positions for 10 meters due to the band size.  I
miscounted the number of band clicks from 80 meters and tuned up
in the middle of the 10 meter CW band, which back then was about
28300 KHz.  I called CQ on side band for about 10 minutes and
wondered why in the Sam Hill nobody was answering.  Then a loud
side band signal came on and a guy told me where I was.  He said
he was in California and he had done the same thing before.  I
thanked him and we both quietly left without giving our calls.
Every rig I have owned, that has had a skirt behind the VFO knob,
I have labeled just to get around.  What about those crystal
calibrators we had to use, counting knob revolutions, and even
locating exact frequencies by finding local TV birdies on the
bands not withstanding.  This doesn't even include the nightmare
of finding a way to tune the dumb radio up so you could work
people on the air.  My, was that alone ever frustrating.  I had my
mom, my 10 year old little sister, and everybody I knew trained on
how to read meters, the SWR bridge, and much more when called upon
to do so.  Then, when I got my first digital rig, the Yaeshu
FT767G, I thought I was going to go crazy.  I had the manual
scanned by a friend for me and spent hours studying it and if I
didn't keep up with things, I was always digging the manual out
and reading parts of it just to figure out how to program the dumb
radio.  I love the digital way of approaching operating, though,
and eventually even learned the software somebody had written for
it.  I rarely used the software, because it wasn't all that
helpful, at least this particular freeware program I had.  Sure, I
appreciated the ease and simplicity of the Ten Tec transceivers I
fell in love with over the years but I always dreamed of dual
VFOes, digital keypad inputs, memory channels, and I remember
using a friends FT901DM once and how cool that was back in the
late seventies.  I still have my Omni D in the box over here a few
feet away and I have thought of digging it out many times when I
have gotten totally frustrated with this IC7000 but as many times
as I have had to dump the CPU by doing a hard reset and returning
everything to the default settings, I have learned more.  I
haven't had to dump the core, as it were, to use a Star Trek term,
for some time and have actually, by trying to interpret the manual
I do have as a file in MS word, have worked my way out of, and
into, new areas.  When I get confident enough in one area, or
more, I then read up on a new area I need to learn about, then I
have my son come over, if needed, and he compares what I think
the manual says with the print manual.  Then I take notes and then
pray I can figure it out on my own the next time.  It would be a
hundred times worse if the keys didn't beep and without the
Millennium keypad entry, but as I think I mentioned once before,
nearly all the settings use the same sequence of key entries, once
you've learned one, you've learned several basic operations in
one.  So in a way, you aren't learning 25 different methods of
entering and exiting the menus.  Shoot, I've had the thing for 6
weeks and haven't made a single contact yet, although I've had it
on side band while listening to myself on my R75 just to see where
the microphone level was presently set as the default, and
reading through that section of the manual, the speech compressor,
vox gain, antitrip, semi break in CW and full break in settings,
are all alike from the same front panel function keys.  Learning
DOS was way worse than this learning curve and frankly, I was
probably the last blind person on the planet to go Windows because
I didn't want to start over again.  The bottom line is, this radio
has turned out not to be one bit worse than learning a new dad
blamed software program, but I'm old now and not as in much of a
hurry as I was to get something to work as I did when I was 14
years old, haw.  When I got my Kenwood V7A, I thought I was going
to lose my mind.  What?  The menus didn't speak?  What's up with
that?  It was way worse than the FT767G and to this day, due to
the fact I hardly ever change frequencies, any time I need to
program something, or change something, I have to get the file
manual out I got from helpful people on this list, plus my cheat
sheet files, and start reading all over again.  Bummer.  You know
how many times I had my 9 year old grandson come in to read
grandpa's menus till I got a handle on what was going on?  He's
now 13 and still helps grandpa, when he is around, that is,
reading stuff off the displays.  Frankly, the IC7000 would be very
easy to master if someone recorded a step by step tutorial and one
followed it.  I remember when I got my first Ten Tec with the
talking frequency read out.  You talk about hamming blind?  Wow!
I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven.  Full break in CW and a
button you could push to tell the exact, I mean, exact frequency?
Far out, as we used to say when high in the late sixties.  Of
course, my main interest has always been CW and although I tune
all the phone bands all the time, and although I used to work tons
of side band, DX and rag chewing and everything else, I always end
up on CW.  When I got the Drake TR4, I worked side band for two
weeks and then decided I wanted to go back to CW and had to have
someone read the manual again to me to figure out what to do to
make the dumb rig work on CW; my favorite mode.  So, here I am at
56, almost 57, years of age, doing the same thing all over again
but the results surpass anything I have ever experienced in radio.
And like I said, I haven't even made one contact yet but I'm about
to because I have enough worked out that I will be able to do just
about anything I need to do, when called upon, while on the air
working CW.  Still lots to learn, though, and I'm still dreaming
of the day when somebody makes a radio that talks everything.
Funny though, I never even dreamed any such thing was possible
back in the sixties and seventies.  I held back upgrading to this
type of a radio because I get so sick and tired of having to learn
by finding some sighted person to read the meters, show me where
voice levels are according to the meter, a scope on this rig, and
all that is frustratingly blind in nature.  I've been blind for 44
years now and am still not adjusted to it and don't plan on doing
so either any time soon.  I just discovered on this rig that one
of the side band filters makes the side band signal change from
the typical single slop bucket sound, as the old A M boys used to
call side band transmissions, to a smooth sounding, almost A M in
quality, sound.  I sat and listened today to the Colorado high
noon net on 7240 that I used to be on every day, for about 45
minutes, and it almost sounded, with that filter on, like I was
back to listening to an A M round table on the air.  Cool!  That's
an old sixties doper's term, too, haw.

Phil.
K0NX




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Dresser" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2008 4:44 PM
Subject: Re: DSP of the Icom 7000


> Phil,
>
> I admire your determination.  It just seems a shame that you have to go
> through all that work just to get the same access (or maybe not quite) as
> someone who can just look at the display.
>
> Steve