Phil,

I hesitate to mention this, but I can't help wondering if the most fun 
you'll have with this radio is the learning process you're going through 
now.  The irony of accessibility is that the more you get, the more 
frustrated you become when you don't have it.  Even with my TS-480, which is 
the most accessible HF radio I've ever owned, I sometimes find that there's 
no substitute for monitoring my signal through another receiver with "the 
wiggly ear meter" as I once heard someone refer to it.  The more I hear you 
talk about the 7000, the more I find myself thinking I'd like to find one 
and play with it for a few weeks.

Steve

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2008 23:42
Subject: Hamming Blind


> 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
>