Since Wire Weasel asked about Icom
Here's Bill with an Icom girl:
Here's the Icom 7800 that has been out for a while. Bil liked to go around and change all the radios to
CB 19 and put them on
AM mode
Here's the new Icom 7600
You'll notice that it has a USB port on the front. It also has one on the back. If you buy a 7600, they throw in a USB keyboard also. Here's the dumb part: You can't use this to connect to your PC for rig control. You still have to use the old serial interface that Icom has included in their
HF rigs for some time. WTF??


The Icom guy said that since it has updateable firmware (via the USB) they may do a firmware update to support that at some point. I reminded him that unless the old serial and USB are on the same bus internally, that will never work. And if they were on the same bus, they could have just as easily made it work via USB already, so that means it probably isn't on the same bus and won't ever work. He said, "oh yeah."
EDIT: We went to another Icom booth and asked another Icom rep the same question about the USB ports. We told him what the other Icom guy said. This guy said that what the other guy told us wasn't correct. He said you CAN use the rear USB port to connect to your PC. We all looked through some of the Icom documents they had and verfied that this really is the case. It looks like the first rep was a little confused about how the USB ports are used.
Here is the new Icom DStar rigs that are companion products:
Here's a closeup of the ID-880h:
It's a dual band DStar 2m/440 mobile with 1052 memories, wide receiver, DTMF mic, and a few other things. It's pretty small and the face plate seperates like most mobiles. Price range is about $500.
Here's the newest DStar Icom
HT:
It is replacing the
IC-91AD, also a 2m/440. It has 1000+ memories, continuous 0.5mhz-1Gz receive and includes GPS. DStar is standard, not optional. Price is about $450.