[ICOM] Icom, Grounds and Mikes

[Jerry Keller]

Bill.... I have a similar problem here, and I'll bet there's lots of us out here...so please let us all know what you figure out for reconnecting the station ground set-up. 73, Jerry K3BZ

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: William Diamond 
  To: icom at mailman.qth.net 
  Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 11:04 PM
  Subject: [ICOM] Icom, Grounds and Mikes


  HI folks,

  Well, I never liked eating fowl, much less Crow but I guess my time has
  come.

  As some of you may recall, on the olds radio room, I had tried several Heil
  Gold Line mikes on the Icom rigs with terrible results. Howls, transmitter
  output with no mike gain turned up, distorted audio and splattered signals.

  Finally I removed all the Heils and started using Icom SM 20 mikes with no
  problems....

  I really like the looks of the Heil Classic mike with the Call letter plate
  so I bought a new one a couple of weeks back.  This was the Icom only
  version.  I really did not intend to use but I thought what the heck, so I
  hooked it up to the IC 781, a total disaster.  Then I tried the 775DSP, same
  thing in fact on every single Icom rig it was unusable.

  I emailed Bob Heil about it and talked with him by phone about the problem
  so he asked me to send the mike to him for testing so I did.

  It worked perfect in fact Bob even recorded an on the air test using it and
  sent it to me.

  So, what was going on?  Bob thought it was RF feedback caused by ground
  loops.

  I started trying several SM 20 mikes listening with headphones and it was
  there also but not as bad because I did not have to run the mike gain as
  height.

  I talked with some experts in the field of grounding and ground loops and
  found out some interesting information.

  I removed every single ground from all of the stations and tried the Heil
  mike and it was great, I even tried an old Gold Line that I had in the
  closet and it too worked fine.

  So it would appear that the problems were not with the mikes but my station
  setups. Please note, this is all brand new rigs, nothing orig. left.

  So, I zinged Bob's mikes and I was wrong (eating Crow) and I apologize.

     WILLIAM J. DIAMOND
    ROGERS, ARKANSAS USA

   HAM RADIO OPERATOR WR0T
   VISIT MY RADIO SITE AT
      wjdiamond.com


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