After more than 30 years for me, waiting for a 40Mt band expansion ,in june 2008 our PT ministry has given the possibility
to the italian radioamateurs to transmit between 7.100-7.200 khz on a secondary basis untill 2009,
when the band "should" become on a primary status also for the Italian HAMs.
This band expansion has evidenced the problem of how to let the ICOM IC-756pro3 to transmit and receive
out of the 7.000-7.100 portion.
When my friend Tony IC8EAA proposed to me to do the mod to his rig, I was not quite sure of what procedure should be used.
On the WEB I have found some mods and some hints have been given by the services,
but none of them was clear to me which should be the right one.

As the rig was not mine, the decision to make any change in the rig was not easy to take.
At the end we both decided to do a sort of step by step procedure and remove one diode at a time and see what happened.
In the following picture the resulting story of getting the rig to transmit and receive on any HF band.
Of course for us HAMS only on the permitted bands.


The mod is marked by the 3 red dots.
Removing just the diodes 3753 and 3755 the receiver opens the factory Ham-band limits , removing further the diode 3754
allows also the transmitter to expand its action on all of the HF bands.
A short test on 50Mhz has been done and here also the band resulted unlimited.

About the access into the ic756pro3 : very easy.

Put the rig on a paper magazine upside down so it is easy to rotate it on the table,
after removing the screws of the bottom cover and the handle, just pull the cover backward a little and tilt up, that is all.
Here follow some pics showing the inside of the rig.

main unit view:

diode removing :

In the main unit view the DSP box has been already taken out, this is easy to do just pull it gently.
Even if the DPS cannot be mounted inverted mark it with a pen toward the front of the rig.
The yellow arrow indicates where are the diodes to be removed.

The second pic :diode removing, shows how to remove that incredible miniature diode part in SMD shape.
With the help of very tiny tweezers hold the diode and put a small soldering iron between it for 10 seconds or so.
The diode comes away simply and put it aside in a box for a possible re-adding in the future.
    



PA PTT reed relay change.

This reed relay is one of the weakest points in such a rig's category .
Driving old and new RF_PAs with stby voltages more than few Volts\mA drain, cause a damage to such small contacts and the relay has to be changed.
Having the spare part it is not difficult to replace the faulty reed, someone of you could change such small reed with a more robust relais.
It could be done, just calculate the drain current of the reed and put a newone with low profile.

reed relay

Main unit relais change :

...

For more info on ICOM mods follows also this link on AB4Oj site