Out of the amateur radio stone age!

For a few months now I have been wanting badly to get back on the HF bands but with my old dinosaur gear and manual tuner; as well as having to sit on the end of my bed, to talk all over the world has been difficult to say the least. So out with the old and in came the new; after a month and a half or so searching and comparing of the icom brand of radios.; I found what I wanted. In addition I really wanted to go to an automatic antenna tuner so after a few different brands and several models of tuners and radios, these two new pieces of gear were an easy decision to settle upon.

The radio hams might say is icom's flagship mobile radio. This is probably because the original version of the radio was released in the mid-to-late 80s, I think. I now have a one person owned four year old radio and this is a good thing because I plan on getting a few more years out of it. The radio is an ICOM ic-706MKIIG pictured below/w the HM-154 t DTMF microphone. In my opinion it is a shame to have this high caliber of radio; that covers every frequency known to man and it comes standard with a severely limited microphone. honestly that's as nice as I can put it ha ha!

For decades now I have been tuning antennas the old-fashioned way slowly and by hand. for me this can taking up to a half an hour to do so. Today was the day I no longer have to do this! You also see below LDG Z-11 proII. I have only had this a few hours and I am already madly in love with it because when you have this radio and an automatic antenna tuner connected together properly; your antenna can be tuned in less than two minutes just by pushing a button.

So far this radio and tuner have been an excellent combo. The excellent reviews from others on the website eham.com of both the radio and the tuner as well as comments from others locally, the decision to have both of these together was incredibly easy and a must-have.