Icom IC-705 Review

I’ve done quite a bit of portable operating in my lifetime. Most of it terribly unsuccessful in my teen years, although this was mostly due to terrible band conditions back then. Today the bands are on fire! I’ve talked to someone in Ohio from a beach in Guam running 50 Watts into a portable antenna, on sideband. If that’s not impressive, I really don’t know what is.

I can’t take credit for any of these, of course, physics is physics and in the portable space, we can’t change much. Increase power or better yet improve antenna gain are really your only two options. In many cases, both of those aren’t practical. So really, thank the sun for those QSOs.

But, this article isn’t about sunspots and the ionosphere, both subjects I’m not qualified to speak on with any intelligence.

Backstory

I started portable operating with an FT-817ND many years ago. I had a small vertical antenna I’d position on top of something (usually a vehicle) and would try to make contacts. It wasn’t very effective. Learning more and more about antennas, I quickly realized the portable antenna I had was quite crap. I don’t even remember the name of it. At the time I blamed the 5 watts the radio put out but in truth, it was the antenna’s really poor efficiency.

Fast forward to the last year or so and the increase in park activations I’ve been performing, a much better understanding of antennas, etc here we are.

I started my POTA journey with my FT-857D, a battery, and EFHW. This radio quickly grew to be an annoyance to carry around. It’s heavy, cumbersome. Truthfully, it’s doable but I fly regularly, so it was a bit painful. I previously owned and loved the KX3 from Elecraft but availability wasn’t there. It’d take several months before I would see the radio.

Looking at the IC-705 and the KX2 I decided I’d fill the gap with a G90. The G90 is a decent radio, it’s just got some really bad receiver performance. This is especially true when in close proximity to another station, on another band. Even with filtering, it overloaded often. Antenna separation, filtering, just couldn’t help the poor little G90.

Combine that with a lack of some pretty basic features (primary among them being a voice keyer!) and I decided to pull the trigger on the IC-705.

Initial thoughts

The form factor of the radio is a bit weird. In certain instances it’s hard to read the display, depending on how it’s sitting. It’s internal battery only produces 5 watts output, which is understandable, but it means I almost always use an external battery. I solved the problem with it’s form factor by 3D printing a small stand, and to protect the front of the radio, a 3D printed cover is installed for transport.

Features & Operations

I do find the menu system a bit odd, some of the things I’d expect to see in it’s quick button aren’t there and are instead in functions but that’s not a major issue in an of itself. This radio had plenty of features though.

GPS

Mostly, I don’t think anyone considers the GPS to be that useful, however it is quite useful. When activating a park, I can quickly pull up my grid square and write it down for logging later on. Additionally, it enables me to get an accurate time. On the display is a nicely displayed UTC time, right on the main display. This feature, in and of itself, is an amazing addition to any portable radio for logging purposes.

Audio quality

I’ve heard some minor rumblings of other users saying the speaker isn’t great, however, I tend to disagree with that assessment. I find the audio to be quite reasonable, if not good. Coming from the G90 for portable operations, I guess this is understandable, but I don’t find myself struggling with audio at all when out and about portable. I’ve also never received any complaints of transmitted audio.

Memory Functions

I’ll admit here that I need to dive a bit deeper into understanding the memories. My primary use for memories is when using SOTAMat to spot myself. This isn’t something I’ve needed to do yet, although, I’ve configured the radio with all of the memories I’d need to do so.

SotaMat is an app and notification system for your mobile phone that is a greatly planned and executed system. I can configure a message on my phone, and transmit that message over HF using digital modes. These messages can be a quick pre-defined email or text message, or can be used to spot myself for POTA or SOTA. It’s important to understand that these messages must be pre-defined on the website and the configuration downloaded to your phone prior to loosing network connectivity via cellular system.

So for my purposes I have a few digital mode frequencies pre-defined in the radio memories. The intent is to be able to find a clear frequency, ensure it’s clear, switch to the memory for a specific digital mode, transmit my spot in digital and switch back to the frequency I just spotted myself on.

Unfortunately, I’ve struggled the few times I’ve tried this. Mainly due to my inexperience understanding the consols of the radio. This is one area I need to work out and understand how to quickly access those memories for such cases where I don’t have cellular phone coverage.

Digital Mode Operation

Speaking of digital modes, one of the primary features I was interested in for this radio was wireless digital mode operation. SOTAMat is intended to be used by just holding the microphone up to your mobile device. It’s important to watch the ALC when doing this but it does work, as I’ve tested this system with my home station.

For digital modes, I wanted to be able to operate digital modes, in general, while portable without having to plug cables in.

For starters the radio’s design itself is great if you’re okay with plugging just one cable in. This is a huge improvement over 3 cables from most other radios for audio and PTT. The IC-705, however, has the capability of wireless digital modes. This is a feature I really wanted to explore. This leads me into my first frustration with the radio or rather several frustrations with Icom in general.

Utilizing this remote control isn’t included with the radio. You first must purchase the RS-BA1 to be able to connect wirelessly. This in and of itself isn’t terrible. I can appreciate that, most users might not want to use this feature and to keep the radio cost down, it’s not included. It’s still frustrating. What’s most frustrating is that you can’t buy and download the software. You must order it, either via cd-rom or USB. First, though… CD? Seriously? Even having to wait for the software to be shipped is frustrating. This software could easily be sold for download. Maybe there isn’t infrastructure on the retailer’s websites. I don’t know but it is indeed a huge frustration.

… even more frustration

Another frustration of the RS-BA1 software is it’s inability to work wirelessly wire ARM devices. My primary laptop these days is an ARM based Windows Laptop. Specifically, it’s a Microsoft Surface Pro.

First, I need to clarify something as this has plagued forum posts for a while now. Before purchasing the surface, I posted on several different forums for different software to ensure it would work. The Microsoft Surface originally featured an Intel based processor (x86/x64). This is what anyone with computing knowledge over the last several years will be familiar with.

Recently, Microsoft has experimented with a few different processors and my Surface uses an ARM based processor. This is different than an Intel processor. Mainly this can affect drivers. Many of my posts were replied with, yea, a surface is a Windows computer, it’ll work. Not quite the full story. Long story short, be careful when looking at these new ARM based tablets/labptops. Also, another frustration is when people don’t fully read posts with questions. I stated many times, it’s ARM not x86 and still replies flooded in that it’ll surely work…

Well guess what, it doesn’t. Icom hasn’t released Arm drivers for the RS-BA1 package yet. So my purchase of the remote software is useless until they update it. Fortunately, they did release a driver for the USB connection, so once can indeed control the radio with a Windows ARM based computer just not wirelessly.

I suspected this going in, but was still disappointed.

Size

The only other disappointing thing about the IC-705 I’ve found is it’s size in comparison to other, similarly spec’d, radios. The Lab 599 is significantly smaller in comparison, as is the KX2 or even KX3. Both of those other radios lack a few key features, such as the wireless operation described above, waterfall display, etc. I don’t know why there is a large discrepancy in size though. The KX2/3 is able to fit an auto tuner inside the radio, Icom packed no such feature into the ic-705.

I do find myself wishing it was just a bit smaller, but now that I’ve had the opportunity to use some of it’s features, I’m quite pleased with the purchase.

Summary

I complain a lot in this post but if I’m being complexly honest, I absolutely love this radio. It’s a little bigger, the software needs to catch up a bit, and Icom needs to catch up with 2024 software delivery but beyond that it is a great radio. It sounds great, it looks great, it has some amazing features, for a portable radio at that.

I don’t think you could go wrong with the Icom at all. I think it’d be a great radio for anyone not to worried about weight. If you’re looking to just drive to a local park for POTA, it’s the perfect combination of features and size/weight.

If you fly a lot or maybe you’re sensitive about size (backpacking for instance), then you might look somewhere else. I find I can still manage to carry it without problems. It’s not the smallest radio out there, but it’s got the features I want and I find it’s worth dealing with it’s size.