IC-746 arrives!

It's always a nice time when you get a new rig, even if it's a second-hand unit.

I had a nice hour's drive on a beautiful autumn's lunchtime to collect my IC-746 in person, a nice gesture from the e-bay seller.

As promised, the rig is indeed in 'mint' condition, showing no signs of use at all.  My trusty FT-450, also an e-bay purchase, was in a similarly good condition.

Some kind of order returns to the operating position.

Of course, with limited space for my equipment, I had to reconfigure and rewire a lot.  I also took the opportunity to vacuum rather an alarming amount of dust from around and within my FT-450!  A certain amount of woodwork was also needed to make everything work together.

The IC-746 is, I have to say, a lovely rig.  The sound coming from its internal speaker, or when passed to external speakers, is fantastic, and a huge improvement on the FT-450.  Rather luckily, as soon as I switched on, I heard a FP station calling by numbers, and managed to complete a SSB QSO easily with him - a new DX entity for me, though I'm surprised I've never heard from FP-land before.

Unfortunately, the 746 doesn't cover TX on 60m, but I'm not very often on that band anyway, and the FT-450 can easily be switched into action if needed.

No action on 2m - the reason for acquiring the 746 in the first place - as yet.  A decent Yagi is on the list of 'to buy' things, so I will certainly be ready by summer!