New (old) rig - an IC-725 for the shack

Just had good reports for my first contact with a new rig in the shack. The Icom IC-725 was spotted on eBay last week and I was the only bidder at $220 which I think is a pretty good deal.

The transceiver has a few minor issues: half the dial light is out, it's a little off frequency and there's a bit of corrosion here and there.

After a little cleaning up I got on air on the Kandos net, VK2ARK, hosted by Tom, at 4pm eastern time. It's a friendly and lively net and they've been kind enough to respond to my calls on a QRP rig in the past. I got good reports including one from Mildura almost 1,000km away.

The IC-725 seems like a good entry level older rig. Although it doesn't have any bells and whistles like DSP or different filters, the AGC has two time constant settings (much better than the still in production IC-718 that has only super-fast AGC).

Update

I've opened it up and moved it pretty much on to frequency (by ear using the 3.699 VK2WI beacon). The dead dial lamp has been removed - it's a tiny 12V incandescent lamp. The hole is too small for any of the LEDs I have laying about.

The lamp is inside a yellow rubber holder. Those ruler gradations are half millimeters, it's pretty small.