Icom took over a floor of the convention hall outside Akihabara Station to showcase some of their equipment, ranging from the exciting new IC-7300, the “big” HF rigs, and their family of D-STAR radios. Flyer.
The HF corner included a timeline showing the milestones for the company, and the release of each of the models. They had also brought along a sampling of classic rigs, which brought a bit of nostalgia.
HF Room - a history of Icom rigs, and a chance to explore the IC-7300 and find out about the IC-7851
Four IC-7300 rigs were set up giving everyone a chance to tune around their favorite portion of 40 meters, and thanks to the RTTY contest, find lots of signals to try the internal RTTY decoder. The 100W version is readily available at Akihabara retailers, with the 50W and 10W versions promised within a couple of weeks. Brochure price: Y139,800 + tax, advertised price: Y128,000 including the 8% tax.
IC-7851 and IC-7700
IC-7300 presentation
The IC-7300 presentation included a walkthrough of the features, contrasting the design against the larger Icom rigs, and then comparing some of the receiver specs against the competition
The D-STAR presentation drew a noticeably larger crowd than the 7300 one. It was essentially a description of the modes available, an update on the repeater infrastructure in Japan, and a reminder of the recently promulgated xxx.30 simplex calling frequencies.
D-STAR rigs
Other exhibitors included Comet (showing off their antenna analyzer among other things), Diamond, LUSO towers, Kohjinsha VERSA Beam, JARD, and JARL.