I have written this blog post several times and have deleted all of them. I’m not sure how to write a thank you post to somebody I can’t talk about here. Time for some back story. I sold my Icom 746Pro to pay down some debt and to help insure we could RV for another year. We were/are also scaling back but my decision to sell the radio was a bad one, I was gung ho to sell “stuff”, any stuff.
During emergencies these types of radios can often be the only source of communication available. In my haste to scale back I sold off a valuable asset, an asset very hard to re-acquire without substantial investment. There are HAMS out there that make claims that Amateur Radio can be done cheaply, I humbly disagree, unless you have LOTS of free time to seek out bargains.
Anyway, fast forward to the past few weeks. I had a discussion with Ronda about saving up for a new or used radio because 1. I miss it A LOT and 2. if something should happen it could come in very useful. She agreed 100% and said she tried to tell me not to sell the Icom, she was right, as usual and I have regretted that decision to this day.
Here is the Icom 746Pro I sold, an all mode radio that really did handle almost all frequencies including 2 meters plus it was portable and could plug right into the 12 volt system in the RV. 
What was I thinking?? The other unfortunate thing about it is the cost to replace it with something new from Icom is $3,600.00!!! Needless to say that is way out of my league right now and for quite some time to come.
I wanted to get another radio but I also wanted it to be the equal or better of the Icom 746Pro. Not an easy task for very little budget and I could not find a decent used 746Pro anywhere so that was ruled out. I happened upon several rigs on Craigslist and eBay, most of which were too expensive as well, including the one pictured below, a Yaesu FT-1000MP Mark-V, I logged that as “I wish!”. Priced at nearly $2,000!! I kept several rigs on the burner that were more affordable but kept going back to this one, what to do, what to do. I discussed it with Ronda and her response was buy it, we’ll work it out. I couldn’t do it, there is no way I could spend that in one big chunk, I didn’t feel it was fair to her.
I can’t go into too many details but somebody purchased the radio for me as a gift. It came out of left field and I’m still in shock and it’s been almost 3 days! I still can’t express in words what this means to me.
It’s an incredible radio out of the reach of most people, new or used. It came to my home last night, I can’t wait to have my first QSO in the new to me rig! Sometimes life throws you a curve that puts a smile on your face. I’m going to set up the RV for mobile use, not sure how yet but will investigate it and post about it soon.
Here it is all boxed up.
The rig all set up, probably not how it’s going to look after this weekend but it will do for now! I have a remote control cable coming so I can control the rig from my PC. That’s it for now, tomorrow I head out to the RV to mow the lawn and bring the rig in to get the emergency flashers fixed again.
