Using Older Radios

Scope

This guide applies to radios that are not in the core supported radios.

Considerations

Older radios may have several limitations:

  • Lack waterfall data
    • wfview gets waterfall data from the rig, so if your rig doesn’t have it, or doesn’t provide it over CI-V (IC-7700, IC-7600), then this part of the interface will be blank. Sadly many radios which present waterfall data on the screen of the radio do not export this data to the connected computer.
  • Difficult physical connection constraints
    • May need a DIY level converter circuit
    • May need a custom audio interface
    • Some rigs have integrated USB, and this is generally preferred.
  • May require manual baud rate assignment in wfview
  • May require manual CI-V address assignment in wfview
  • May not answer our rig ID broadcast (discovery) request (Ic-706 and older)
    • You can manually assign the CI-V address in the Settings tab, and then select “Use as model too”. Only works if the radio is using the default CI-V address.
  • May have unusual metering scale, or no metering at all
  • May lack PTT command (IC-780, IC-736, IC-718, IC-706)
    • Note, we have added the capability to use RTS (serial port signal “Ready To Send”) as a way to PTT
    • For these radios, the usual approach is to use a USB to CI-V converter that includes the ability to toggle the PTT pin on the ACC port by means of the internal serial adapter’s RTS pin.
  • May use non-standard frequency format (IC-713, currently not supported)

Despite these limitations, if you are willing to do some work, you can operate your rig remotely using wfview for the CI-V data and the audio.

Look how beautiful wfview is with a radio such as the Icom IC-718! I am accessing this radio remotely too!

Setup

First, it will be wise to launch wfview and set some basic settings:

  • Set the serial port to the correct port for the radio.
  • Set the baud rate to the highest baud rate the radio reliably works under
  • Manually enter the CI-V address of the radio. For example, for the IC-7100, the default CI-V address is “88”. Some radios don’t require this step, in particular newer radios from the past two decades. But it doesn’t hurt if you know the CI-V address to just put it in.
  • If the radio does not have a “Read Transceiver ID” command (0x19 0x00), then check the “Use as Model too” box. This checkbox causes wfview to identify the radio by the CI-V address you provided, trusting that the radio is set to the default CI-V address, which other radios use as their default CI-V and reply to Rig ID queries. Basically, every radio made prior to 1998 lacks this command. So if you have an IC-736, check this box.

Now press “Save Settings” and then press “Connect”.

On the radio, the recommended settings, when available, are:

  • CI-V Echo: off
  • CI-V baud rate: maximum supported
  • CI-V Transceive: ON
  • CI-V address: Use the default value (and note it)

Once these parameters are set, launch wfview. Verify that, for supported radios, the bottom-right corner lists the model number (or Rig ID) and not “NONE”.

If you wish to serve the radio’s control and audio over the network, please see the Remote Operation guide.

Adding a Radio

With the release of wfview 2.0 comes a new tool called RigCreator, which allows the user to create a rig file. This is a graphical tool which presents to the user a list of all the features and commands for a radio.

The details are covered on this page.

Briefly:

  1. Start up wfview and enable RigCreator in the User Interface settings
  2. Press RigCreator at the bottom of wfview’s main window
  3. Select “Icom” or “Kenwood” as the manufacturer
  4. Press “Default Rigs” and select an existing rig model that is close to your radio in terms of when it came out.
  5. Edit the rig file. You can right-click in the Commands table to add a new entry, and then select from the drop-down menu the command you wish to add.
  6. Make sure to edit the three fields at the top of the window:
    1. Model
    2. CI-V address (or CAT identifier for Kenwood)
    3. RigCtlD Model (model number from Hamlib)
  7. Review the changes carefully, and then press “Save File”. This will place the file in the correct user-writable location for your platform. You can read about that more here.
  8. Restart wfview
  9. If successful, please consider sending your rig file to the wfview team, either on our support forum or with a Pull Request to our gitlab project.

Supported Radios and Features

For a list of currently-supported radios, please see this area of our source repository. There are no older radios which provide spectrum (waterfall) data over CI-V or CAT.

As of 2025-01-27:

Manufacturer Model CIV Address can transmit full-duplex comms PTT Command
Icom DEFAULT 0x0 True False YES
Icom IC-705 0xA4 True True YES
Icom IC-706 (MkIIG) 0x58 True False YES
Icom IC-706 (Mk1/Mk2) 0x48 True False YES
Icom IC-7100 0x88 True False YES
Icom IC-718 0x5E True False YES
Icom IC-7200 0x76 True False YES
Icom IC-7300 0x94 True True YES
Icom IC-746 PRO 0x66 True False YES
Icom IC-746 0x56 True False RTS/DTR
Icom IC-756 PRO III 0x6E True False YES
Icom IC-756 PRO II 0x64 True False YES
Icom IC-756 PRO 0x5C True False YES
Icom IC-756 0x50 True False RTS/DTR
Icom IC-7610 0x98 True True YES
Icom IC-785x 0x8E True True YES
Icom IC-905 0xAC True True YES
Icom IC-9100 0x7C True True YES
Icom IC-9700 0xA2 True True YES
Icom IC-R7100 0x34 False False NO
Icom IC-R8500 0x4A False False NO
Icom IC-R8600 0x96 False True NO
Icom ID-31A/E 0x84 True False YES