Tips for your 756 that you just took out of the box and hooked up

You don't need to read the manual to operate the radio

This is the easiest radio to operate ever made. Everything has plain English menus. Just look around and you'll find stuff. By looking up functions in the manual you'll take longer to learn than you will just by pressing buttons. Later on after you learn the radio's operation THEN open the manual to clear up any questions you have.

Boot up

There is a boot up screen that appears as the radio calibrates itself. At the bottom is where your call sign will appear once you program it in. (Your call sign goes in at the bottom of the "Display Set" menu)

The Display

The display will be dim for a few minutes when you turn it on so don't be trying to find the brightness setting. Once it warms up it'll be fine. This warm up deal is normal, not a bug. Later on you can try out the various display settings but you're not missing anything with the default settings.

Get rid of that blue outline on top of the spectrum scope

While the scope is running, press set to bring up the scope settings menu, then use the arrow keys to bring the hilite onto the "Max Hold" item, turn the VFO to turn off Max Hold, hit Exit to return to scope mode.

Get a Red Centerline on the scope

Press "Marker" on the bottom middle to get the TX Marker redline on. Pressing twice gives you the "Sub Marker", you don't want that up, you want the TX Marker in the center of the scope.

Get the radio set up to give you acceptable transmit audio (comp-off-wide)

With the "Comp" button on the lower left of the screen, shut off the speech compressor and engage the wide transmit filter. By pressing and holding the Comp button you toggle between Wide(2.9), Medium(2.6) and Narrow(2.0) transmit filters. By quickly pressing the Comp button you toggle the speech compressor on and off. The flat EQ settings should be ok for now. To get at the EQ, "Exit" scope mode, press "Set", then press "Levels" and you'll have the levels menu.

Do some quick filter tailoring (SSB Mode)

The filter button toggles the three filters. Press and hold the filter button to get the filter menu up. Press Exit to to clear the filter menu. The PBT knobs control the upper and lower filter skirts, moving them both together will move the entire filter up or down. Press and hold the PBT Clear to zero the filters to the 1500hz center line. You don't need the menu up to narrow the filters, or move the filters up or down. You only need the menu to widen the filter beyond it's current max setting. All filter settings are memorized on the fly. Meaning that as you play with the PBT or width, that setting is kept in that filter's memory without any "Save" operation needed.

The default filters suck. They are all center lined on 1500hz. The 3.0 filter is too wide. I'll tell you here how to get all three filters acceptable so you can have decent receive audio without hiss. You don't need the filter menu up to do this, you can do it just by selecting the filter you want to tailor.

The below instructions assume you still have the default filter widths programmed.

Bring up the 3.0 filter. Clear any shift by holding the PBT clear button. Turn either PBT knob counter clockwise until the BW display reads 2.6. Now you have a 0-2600hz filter. 

Bring up the 2.4 filter. Clear any shift by holding the PBT clear button. Turn BOTH PBT knobs until the SFT display reads -300. Now you have a 0-2400hz filter (instead of a 300-2700).

Bring up the 1.8 filter. Clear any shift by holding the PBT clear button. Turn both PBT knobs until the SFT display reads -400. Now you have a 200-2000hz filter (instead of a 600-2400).

Menus

"Set", while on the scope display only brings up the scope settings.

Press exit to get rid of the scope or any other menu then press "Set" to get the main set menus.

Press and hold on some buttons brings up menus relevant to that button. This includes "Meter" which brings up an array of digital meters. AGC brings up an AGC menu. VOX brings up a vox menu. Filter brings up a filter menu.

The main set menu is split up into four areas. I'd be wasting my time and yours to go into that because it's all self explanatory.

Other mode specific menus (RTTY, CW) are shown by being in that mode and clearing the scope and the new items are on the bottom.

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