[ICOM] New IC-7700 Dual Watch and CW pitch

[Bill Tippett]

SM4RNA wrote:
 >On the picture of the 7700 I notice that there is a knob to adjust the
CW-pitch. That adjustment is sometime in a meny or on the front of the
radio. I choose the pitch to my personal liking. 440Hz fits my ears just
perfect. As I use the same ears all the time I see no reason to adjust the
pitch.

         I very frequently adjust CW Pitch depending on
the situation.  For extremely weak signals using very
narrow bandwidths, I like very low Pitch of 270 Hz...even
down to 240 Hz.  For "normal" DX-ing I like about 300 Hz.
If I am trying to find the TX frequency in a large split
pileup I may use a little higher like 350 Hz and use BW
of 4-500 Hz.  For contests, where I need to hear stations
that call me off-frequency, I often use 500 Hz Pitch and a
600 Hz BPF.  This allows me to pick up guys calling off-
frequency by +/- 300 Hz without needing to touch my RX VFO
(i.e. since I can still hear signals from 200-900 Hz).

         My 1984 Kenwood TS-930S had continuously adjustable
Pitch down to very low frequencies and I learned the
trick of listening to very low Pitch while chasing weak
low band DX over many years.  I have a recording of a long
path QSO (ultra weak) on 160m with JJ1VKL/4S7 that I made
in 1991.  I recently checked that Pitch using an external
DSP program and it was 240 Hz.  Below are a few recordings
of some DX signals on 160 to give you an idea what low
pitch sounds like:

http://users.vnet.net/btippett/topband_sounds.htm

This may not work for everyone but it is simply something
that I have discovered "works for me" over many years of
low band DX-ing.

         Having both a wide selection of CW Pitches (going
even below the normal lower cutoff of 300 Hz) and being
continuously adjustable from the front panel is a very
important feature to me.  Some newer DSP rigs like the
FT-1000MP family only allow Pitch steps of 50 Hz but
Ten-Tec's Orion will allow 10 Hz steps.

                                 73,  Bill  W4ZV