TS-480-HX vs IC7000

[N8CXX]

Looking at both rigs. The radio will be used at home and in the motorhome. Anything I should know about either one?
Thanks

[N3LYT]

I have a IC 7000 can't be beat for a small radio. Excellent DSP filtering composite video output very small foot print automatic tuner output for the likes of LDG tuners etc.(radio will power them) AF SSB audio filters yata yata. I'll give it a thumbs up. A consideration with the HX at 200 watts it will suck up a lot of battery so the extra power may not be an asset. Some have complained that the IC 7000 runs hot frankly it is not much hotter than my IC 706 and they have not been losing PA's so it may double as a heater.

[N8CXX]

I've read good reviews on both rigs. The HX has two distinct 12v hook ups, one for each power module. Each requires 23 amps. I have one 30 amp PS. I really want to good Rx that I can add a 250hz cw filter.

These new radios have out distanced my knowledge. My current rigs are IC-751A and IC-228H. Both 20+ years old. The 751 has no 40m Tx so I'm looking for an upgrade for both the house and mh.

[W9WLS]

I have the IC-7600 in the house (outstanding radio), the MH has a FT-450 ( good rig), and the truck has a FT857-d (also good ).
I would be inclined to go with the IC-7000 for mobile op's , the only add-on I would consider on my MH would be an external tuner for those "strange occasions" when I can just throw up a wire or need to tweak the big whip mounted on the Reese receiver .

[N3LYT]

I've read good reviews on both rigs. The HX has two distinct 12v hook ups, one for each power module. Each requires 23 amps. I have one 30 amp PS. I really want to good Rx that I can add a 250hz cw filter.

These new radios have out distanced my knowledge. My current rigs are IC-751A and IC-228H. Both 20+ years old. The 751 has no 40m Tx so I'm looking for an upgrade for both the house and mh.

Frankly you won't need any filters with the IC 7000 all of the DSP filters are adjustable from very wide to very narrow. I replaced a IC 737 with an IC 7200 I really don't care about one brand or any other I have radios from the big 3 and like the features for what ever one I bought for it's intended use but the Icoms have filled my needs in the HF bands flawlessly.

[NN5I]

The 751 has no 40m Tx

In a 751, no TX on one band is almost always dirty relay contacts. Been there, done that. Like most solid-state multiband rigs, the 751 switches output filters for each band. There's a relay for each band-specific output filter, and the contacts get dirty. Occasionally the relay just plain fails, but that's unusual.

Sometimes you can get the cover off a relay without removing the relay from the PC board, and clean the contacts with a piece of 1200 grit or 2000 grit paper, which can be bought at places like English Color that sell to body shops. Can't get any? You can sometimes clean relay contacts with just a little strip of paper such as you'd use in a laser printer.

I like my IC-7000 (and my IC-R7000 too, totally different item).

Cheers!

[Mr. Ham]

Kenwood TS 480 - 3 different models of the 480.
The SAT - is the auto tuner 100 watt version.
The HX is the 200 watt version..

The purpose of the 200 watt version is to be able to operate the larger amplifiers that requires more drive - The Ameritron ALS 1500 needs about 165 watts of drive to get the full 1500 watts out of it.

It wouldn't make any sense to buy a HX if all you wanted to do was rag chew in the camper. 100 watts would be more efficient from a batteries standpoint.

The SAT model probably only draws about 5 or 6 amps when you transmit SSB on HF. If it is like my 590 - it uses less power then the 50 watt FM mobile does.

The Kenwood TS 480 SAT is a much better transceiver then the cheaper IC 7000 Icom...

[NN5I]

The 751 has no 40m Tx

That's almost certainly a failure of the 40m relay on the filter board. That's the relay that selects the transmit bandpass filter. Often it's just dirty contacts. Sometimes you can pry off the relay cover to clean the contacts for a zero-cost repair, without even unsoldering the relay

[N3LYT]

The Kenwood TS 480 SAT is a much better transceiver then the cheaper IC 7000 Icom...[/QUOTE]

They are both good units when some one spends 1000 bucks on a radio of course they are not going to say I should have bought the other one. Each has it's merits you can't go wrong with either one. If you feel you need 200 watts then the choice is obvious.

[Mr. Ham]

Well - 200 watts is just for the CB'rs as far as I am concerned.
Unfortunately today we give amateur radio exams and then we hang out to dry the new hams by not requiring them to learn anything or do anything.
Had their learned how to calculate power and gain, they would learn that 100 watts is probably the most efficient use of power on the HF band.
To move the S meter needle one S unit below S-9, you would need a power increase of 6 - or 600 watts.
To move the S meter needle one S unit above S-9 you would need a power increase of 10. Hence with a 100w transceiver you would need 1000 watts to move the needle from 10/9 to 20/9 and you would need 10,000 watts to move it to 30/9 and 100,000 watts to move it to 40/9..

You can get a lot better power increases by just using a more efficient beam antenna with some gain. A 3 or 4 or 5 element beam will make a 100 watt signal look like a 1000 watt signal - with no distortion and no increase to your electric bill.

[NN5I]

Unfortunately today we give amateur radio exams and then we hang out to dry the new hams by not requiring them to learn anything or do anything.
Had [they] learned how to calculate power and gain ...

And, of course, had you learned it you could have avoided some of the following errors:

they would learn that 100 watts is probably the most efficient use of power on the HF band.

Your logic is hard to follow. Often, it takes very little power to communicate. If you can hear me comfortably at 1 watt, how is 100 watts more efficient? Or, if you can't hear me at 100 watts but have armchair copy at 500 watts, how is 100 watts more efficient?

To move the S meter needle one S unit below S-9, you would need a power increase of 6 - or 600 watts.

Well, no. A standard S-unit is nominally 6 dB, which is a power ratio of about 4, not 6. They'd need 400 watts approximately. Most receivers' S-meters are very inaccurate and not really logarithmic anyway, so the power ratio between, say, S5 and S6 on the meter might be very different from the power ratio between S6 and S7 on the meter.

The difference between 100 watts and 600 watts is about 1.3 standard S-units.

Why did I say approximately above? Many people parrot that a power ratio of 2:1 is 3 dB. I parrot it too, but actually it's about 3.0103 dB -- a negligible error that's easily within slide-rule accuracy.

To move the S meter needle one S unit above S-9 you would need a power increase of 10. Hence with a 100w transceiver you would need 1000 watts to move the needle from 10/9 to 20/9 and you would need 10,000 watts to move it to 30/9 and 100,000 watts to move it to 40/9.

Sort of. There are no S-units above S9. Many S-meters are marked in tens of dB above S9, and indeed 10 dB is a power ratio of 10:1. But most S-meters are just as inaccurate above S9 as below, so the required increase might vary wildly.

Cheers!

[N3LYT]

200 watts does make a difference mobile any antenna in a mobile situation sucks the extra power helps it bring the ERP out of the QRP range.