Hi Phil;
First of all I hope you appreciate your son's help.  My boys are 28 and 26 
and they wouldn't consider putting a antenna together.  In their defense my 
older son has helped a lot with some computer adventures but antennas 
wouldn't happen.
As for the r7 I had one and its a nice antenna.  Its a few feet shorter than 
the r8 and I suspect a fair bit lighter.  Had lots of r8 problems.  The 
thing kept blowing down and at $500 a pop that got old.
The only problem with the r7 was that I found the 40 meter band width to 
really be 75 kc under 2/1 as advertised.  You are quite right that a tuner 
will give you some extra space.  The trick was to get that 75 kc in the part 
of the band that you frequent.
Give the kid a bonus.
Richard
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2008 11:16 PM
Subject: Close to calling CQ


Well, I am almost on the air.  Over the nice weather this weekend,
my son, who builds draperies and blinds, and installs them for a
living, in other words, he is a crackerjack man when it comes to
making exact measurements, put my R7 vertical back together.  It
was over at a friends house but to save several hundreds of
dollars for a new R8 vertical, I bought my old R7 back from my
friend who gave up on HF operations.  Plus, I'll be hanging an 80
meter inverted V from 50 feet and putting up a 40 meter rotatable
dipole and a 3 element 6 meter beam at 55 feet so the vertical is
sort of an extra backup antenna.  Anyhow, as I was saying, my son
followed the measurements and assembly instructions to the letter
and got it back up on a three foot tripod on the roof that I
hadn't removed.  Based upon SWR readings I remember from having it
in the same spot before, everything is about right.  40 Meters is
generally a little higher for SWR even when you set it for the CW
band but the auto tuner LDG AT1000pro will have no problem tuning
all the readings I took down to 1 to one.  It snowed here in
Denver over the last couple of days, about 6 inches, so when the
weather warms up, we are going to try and lengthen the vertical a
little to get, perhaps, a little better, or lower, reading at the
bottom of 40 meters but as I said, the auto tuner won't have any
problems tuning it just about any place on the bands as it stands
now.  I used it in the AM mode to put a 30 watt carrier on the air
so I could get SWR and power readings because I don't have the
line made up yet from the MFJ CW keyboard to the Icom 7000 input
for CW operations.  Plus, if you want to raise and lower your
power output, you switch into what they refer to as a "Quick Set"
mode and then by tuning the VFO knob, you can adjust the power
output to what ever you desire.  This same method, using the VFO
knob and the Quick Set mode, along with the function keys at the
bottom of the front panel, is used to adjust microphone gain, vox
delay, CW delay, and a number of other settings.  The absolute two
most important pieces of equipment I have ever purchased are the
TW1 and TW2 W4RT HF and VHF watt meters and the Millennium keypad
from John Hansen.  Well, I guess that makes three and not two.
The watt meters work perfectly and for those who aren't familiar
with them, you only have a volume control knob on the front to
adjust the voice volume and three quick press buttons to read
power output, reflected power, and SWR and all with a human
quality voice.  The only thing I wish would be different about the
watt meters is that they would have used a naked female voice, at
least I think she is naked, she sounds like it to me, like the
Icom and Kenwoods do, haw.  Very cool, to say the least,
regardless.  So far, I have been spending all my spare time
learning the radio, which has been no easy task, but once you get
the basic functionality down, it begins to make sense
collectively.  I keep notes of entry functions, however, because
although many settings are the same, at my age it is easy to
forget.  I'm not suggesting that this is the case when you change
modes, which is not a difficult thing to do with the radio nor
with the Millennium keypad, because you can easily, and quickly,
drop into whatever mode you have dialed up with the buttons by
pressing and holding the key for a second until you hear a second
beep, or often it is a double beep.  Nearly all buttons beep which
helps.  Functions key one or two often are used to move up and
down in a menu structure.  Function three, for example, when held
for a double beep, deletes a signal memorized channel you are
presently sitting on or listening to.  Function key four is used
for swapping channel frequencies to a VFO, or conversely,
transferring a VFO frequency into a memory channel.  Function key
4 also is used for splitting frequencies in the VFO modes.  In
short, the function keys are standards, for the most part, for
each operating mode you may be in.  The speech compressor, if you
are into using such things, is set just as the microphone gain is,
and that is, by using the Quick Set mode and tuning the VFO knob.
Not very helpful in this case for a blind operator.  I have a
separate receiver, on the other hand, so will be able to hear my
own output signal when desired.  This same feature, for that
matter, may be built into the 7000 but I haven't found it
specifically in the manual as of yet.  I've found and read what I
think might be a reference to it and I'd be very surprised it that
feature is not built into the radio, listening, that is, to your
own output audio phone signal because it is a common feature in
lots of radios these days.  Selecting semi break in CW or full
Break in CW is chosen, for example, by entering the Quick Set
mode and pressing Function key one once or twice.  I should
purchase the software to see how speech friendly it is but
frankly, I have run ham rigs with computers before and although it
is pretty neat, I often grew tired of firing up the software just
to change bands and the like.  In my case, I'd have to come up
with a laptop because my ham gear is around the corner and in
another room from my main computer stations.  On the other hand,
if that software for the Icom 7000 is speech friendly, I can see
where it might be a lot easier to make changes and settings
because you wouldn't have to remember anything in particular.  The
last software program I had to run the Yaesu FT767G wasn't all
that speech friendly and was slow.  I have so many wires and
cables running around on my bookshelves to connect everything to
the power supplies and equipment, dragging a computer in there,
and I do have an extra one I could use specifically for ham radio,
might push me off the deep end.  I hate wires running all over the
place.  I have discovered over the years, I don't find the need to
move around the bands as much either.  This includes 2 meters,
where I work one repeater, and on 430 MHz I have one simplex
frequency I used to run remote base operations from a small 70 CM
100 MW tiny handie talkie back to my Kenwood V7a when I'm on my
back deck watching my grandchildren, or dogs, which ever the case
may be at the time.  I sometimes get the two mixed up.  Even then,
I ain't what you call your most dedicated 2 meter ham any more.  I
used to work nothing but FM simplex years ago with big beams and
amplifiers and all and am tempted to go back to it except the
friends I do keep in touch with are mobile most of the time,
driving truck and the like, 95 percent of the time and a repeater
and echo link works great for that type of thing.  In the next day
or two, I will make my first CW contact on 40, 30, or probably 20
meters and I'll get to try out the full break in which I'm
guessing I won't like as well as the Ten Tec way of doing it.  Ten
Tec spoiled me over the years with their full break in system.  By
the way, the Icom 7000 is literally the size of a cigar box so if
you got um, smoke um.  It is one royal pain in the butt trying to
screw two separate coax leads into the back, external speaker,
quarter inch code key line, half inch ground braid, and if you
connected all the other externals in the back, the radio might
just fall over backwards.  I reached up today to do something with
the radio, heard a beep, and the radio went dead.  No sound; no
nothing.  It was on but I couldn't figure out what I did and I
tried everything for about 30 minutes.  I did a hard reset,
because I only had a few memory channels set and didn't care, but
I had forgotten already how to access the sub submenu, no, I
didn't stutter just then, to set the beep level and voice
synthesizer level to high volume.  I had to wait till my son came
home for lunch, he eats with us most days for lunch because his
kids are here and he brings his kindergartner home who stays the
afternoon with us, and without the manual, he showed me how to
make the needed changes for better ease of operation.  By the way,
it was a good thing this happened because during reset, and my son
pointing out how to access the menu I needed, I learned a couple
of new things about where I want things set.  I'd be crying, on
the other hand, if I had foolishly programmed all 500 memories with
frequencies and then had to do a hard reset.  Of course I wrote it
down this time, silly, but it isn't something you do every day,
unless you are green as apples like me, but this time I wrote down
all the individual steps because the voice synthesizer volume is
number 20 on the sub submenu list of 51 items you can choose from.
Nobody said it would be easy.  If you want easy, I'll give you my
DX20 and a single 40 meter crystal and we'll find you a sky buddy
to receive on.  Don't come crying to me, though, if you reach
behind the radio and touch the wrong spot on the dalkey relay.

Phil.
K0NX