LDG MC-7610 Dual Color Meter for IC-7610

This is great for those who like analog meters. It doesn't necessarily add much utility to the tranceiver (see below). There are two meters on the front. On the back there is a 3.5 mm jack for connecting to the external meter output of the IC-7610-short cable included. There is also a power connector. You must connect power to the MC-7610, There seems to be an internal relay that disconnects the meters if the unit is off or unpowered. There is a button that toggles the power on the back. Also on the back, are 2 pairs of small knobs, one for each meter. One of each pair controls the illumination brightness for the associated meter. The other knob changes the color the illumination from blue to green to yellow to whitish to orange to red. The IC-7610 has some settings for the analog meter outputs (MENU, SET, Connectors, External Meter). The only External Meter Output settings that are actually functional on the current firmware release (1.30) are the Auto setting. The auto settings cause the analog meters to mirror the meters on the digital display. That is, they show signal strength during receive and a selected value during transmit. Setting the output for the sub meter to anything but Auto or S (which do the same thing on the sub meter) results in no output to the analog meter ever. Selecting S for the main meter results no output during transmit; Anything else, except Auto, outputs nothing during receive and the selected value during transmit. Unless ICOM changes things in a future release, the auxiliary settings are not much use for external analog meters. On my setup I found that setting the auxiliary level on the rado at 75 percent worked well. I can see no really good way of calibrating this precisely. I just changed the setting until the two analog and display meters looked like they were reading the same.

These meters work. The illumination is even. Each meter has 2 adjustments. One knob adjusts the brightness; the other changes the color from blue to green to sort of white to yellow to orange to red. There are no adjustments for the meters. A push switch toggles the illumination on and off.. The meters are responsive appropriately damped. The problem is with the IC-7610. The settings are less than useful. The main meter can be set to mirror the main meter on the radio, or it can display another value,. In that case, it reads zero during receive. The sub meter can display only the signal strength. If you choose any other setting, it displays zero. I found that setting the output level at 67 percent is abuot right.. In summary, for those who like analog meters it's really cool. It's just that, with the current IC-7610 firmware (1.30), it doesn't add much functionality.