Looks like Icom is potentially delving into the 5cm Band.



Icom SHF Project



There's a lot of potential with something like this. Pretty clever implementation of the RF module being mounted at the antenna location with a remote-control unit to eliminate any line loss. Really, REALLY hoping they wise up and drop the re-tooled 705 control unit and use an SHF HT as the control unit.  

Why would you want that?

It'd be good if it included 1.2GHz, would make it easier for the microwave satellite frequency combos.

Welcome to 1970. There's absolutely nothing clever about this. Been done for at least 50 years. It might be new for mainstream amateur radio, but it is by no means "new" or "clever". Hell, pretty much every cell tower puts the power amp's and LNAs at the top of the tower. So does every SATCOM terminal or receive-only dish. Same for commercial Wi-Fi and backhaul radios. Physics demands it be this way.

The real question is whether there is a market. Icom obviously thinks so. It wouldn't seem to be the case if you look at what the niche ham players are currently doing in the amateur 13cm and 5cm bands, which isn't much even allowing that most hams these days are appliance operators.

Consider also what Icom might want you to pay for this stuff, and how that compares to, for example, the Ubiquiti commercial line-up. If you want to stand up your own fully private, mesh network it's almost certainly going to be cheaper, easier and more functional using that stuff than buying a bunch of Icom radios.

It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

Because sitting at a desk playing ham radio isn't for me.


If its use case is for sitting in a musty basement doing EME, absolutely not.

Considering the bands and form factor, that's the only realistic application. Microwave contests/weak signal work, EME, and satellite.

This isn't the product for you then.

If you're expecting some kind of tactical mesh communications system, this isn't it.

It would be neat if someone would build a tactical mesh communications system for 420/1.2/2.4/5GHz amateur bands, but it seems... unlikely.

Quoted as gospel spoken.

Data + amateur radio is perpetually stuck in the freakin’ 1980s.

For off-the-shelf stuff.
There's some neat stuff happening with SDR's and SBPC/NUC's.  But right now it's all homebrewed stuff.

Any killer apps you have in mind?

For sure. My gripe about amateur radio solutions is that everything ends up being an inelegant mess of wires, adapters, cabling, and clunky hardware. With the level of technology available, there’s no reason we aren’t eliminating cabling completely using Bluetooth or other RF links.






Low-latency video over RF for starters. Mesh networking next. 5cm’s gets us this, and Icom has a real opportunity to push the envelope here, but we’re going to end up with some bullshit for meteor scatter when this is all over. I’m fully aware of Ubiquiti, and Broadband Hamnet; my complaint is that if a manufacturer is going to enter the space of high-bandwidth hardware and not fully exploit it, what even is the point?

The IC-705 uses Bluetooth for headsets / speakers, although I have not tried that yet, and Wi-Fi in place of a USB cable for  cat control and audio links to a computer for digital modes. It is amazing to do digital modes with a handheld tablet and no cables. I am going to try the Bluetooth connection for an external speaker today or maybe even a headset

I think you will see a simple tower mounted 2.5GHZ and 5GHz transceiver. I don't think the indoor unit will operate like a typical transceiver as we are use to. Think more of it being software controlled. This way you can configure the transceiver to operate in whatever method you wish.

If you look at the Flex and Anan series radios, you will something similar. These radios can do much more than SSB, CW, FM, and AM. It just takes someone writing the right software to control the radio. All this done over a simple ethernet link. Now place that box on the tower. It is possible to do things similar to TCIP now. https://www.varac-hamradio.com/

I have no doubt that indoor unit (I hate saying 705 case) contains some form of digital control to the tower transceiver. If they are smart there will be no analog signals and be completely digital. Clue was the guy saying POE. Also note that tower box had two antenna ports plus what looked like a WIFI antenna although it wasn't mentioned. That indoor control head will work as the middle man.

Remember whatever Icom or any other major radio manufacturer does, it has to be idiot proof. Can you imagine the customer support overload they would experience when offering a complicate universal transceiver. Thank goodness for user self support.  The more complex you make something the more support you need to offer.

Where do you get "high bandwidth hardware"? They only talk about low-bandwidth modes. If you want WiFi, that already exists.

It was mentioned, it's a GPS receiver used to maintain frequency accuracy/stability.

If someone is looking for an amateur MPU5, this isn't it.

Tried to get an IQ recording of it. It's still very beta and they don't even have a mic connector on it yet. I asked if it had and pulse generation capabilities and the engineer said no, but got real excited

I just want low latency video over RF in a streamlined package and I want Icom to make it happen.

Curios what type of video do you want?

How does a "tactical mesh communications" system differ from a "mesh communications system"? Is it merely form factor? MPU5 vs. regular WAPs/routers?

There are enough LoRa mesh projects out there now that work with ATAK/WinTAK, in particular Meshtastic. That's pretty close, but it's not sending high bandwidth video back for the GO's to get wet over as they watch the troops move on an objective. Is the latter functionality really necessary?

Like what?

You'll never see that in an Icom amateur radio product.

However, the problem has been solved already. Example: https://connexhd.com/collections/industrial-solutions

I know it’s been solved. I can get 720p feeds pumped into my eyeballs at 50Mbps from a DJI FPV.

Imagine getting access to a Microwave transceiver and wasting it on boomer shit like ragchews and rain scatter lmaoooo.

Icom has the potential to NOT dick this up.

All they have to do is allow external sample input. Let the radio support ragchew out the box but let the community support 3rd party apps.

If they did that in a week I could port my DVB-s/t encoder to stream samples in (like fldigi audio but way more data rates) using USB 3 you can put 50 MHz of bandwidth through the pipe.

I spent half the hamfest trying to figure out why elecraft and flex cant even stream a mhz out. The tangerine sdr however has me pumped.

You really can't figure that out?!? Maybe look at the amateur HF bands, and the regulations on amateur HF data, and see where you're going to fit a MHz wide signal.

So that means i can't monitor all 30MHz at once? I dont want 16 slices at all of 300khz. I just want one wideband and can do my own decimation. They are already sampling at over 100msps so the datas there, however the 1gbe interface won't support it.

Ok I thought you were talking about two-way communications vs RX only.

You answered your own question.

It was almost accomplished as part of the openHPSDR "Minerva" design:

http://openhpsdr.org/videos/Friedrichshaven2016/VK6PH.mp4

Unfortunately interest, opportunity and motivation fell apart among those who were developing the capability. They had actually built several prototype PCIE cards but never got them to fully function. It would have been bad-ass, though. Almost zero firmware content, just enough for a small control FPGA on the board, and IMHO even that was a bad move, they could just as easily used a normal CPU there. Drop a PCIE card in your PC, connect that to an outboard RF unit, and now you've got access to full bandwidth data via PCIE, with the wideband DSP code being developed for NVIDIA CUDA instead of in firmware.

Instead that groundbreaking approach, they turned their efforts to a radio that has a built-in PC and a custom front panel, much like the SunSDR and Flex stuff. It's called Andromeda. It seems that ham radio operators simply can not wean themselves off of the idea that a radio has to be a single box with a front panel. I just don't understand it

This is the way.

If this tangerine radio is what it looks like it will be then ill take a swing.