The WBFM is a combination of old and new technology. It combines an FM I.F. strip that was pulled from a 70’s vintage stereo receiver and I added a re-designed AGC and Op-amp circuits.  It connects to the 10.7 I.F. output on your Icom R7000, R7100, R8500 or your R8600. It can also interface to other VHF/UHF models that have a 10.7MHz output.  The Icom R8600 can receive the FM broadcast band but the 2nd I.F. bandwidth is only 25KHz. The IC-R8600 cannot output the entire 150KHz Wide FM bandwidth.

Built inside an extruded chassis it’s powered by an external 12 volts power supply (not supplied). The rear connections are a DC power jack, a 10.7 BNC input and a demodulated FM output RCA jack. On the front panel there’s an output level control and an L.E.D. power indicator.  It can connect to a PC sound card line-in jack and software can be used to extract the wideband SSB sub-carriers. The demodulator can pass a wide bandwidth, low distortion (less than .5%) audio and VLF, from 10 to 100 KHz. Using a separate Stereo decoder and a stereo audio amplifier, (also not included)  you can enjoy FM stereo music on your Icom receiver.   Using the RDS spy software, you can extract the RDS FM data (available free on other websites).  Also using SDR software it can also extract the FM/SCA carrier.

Before you purchase it, make sure that your computer is compatible. There are few checks you can do. Your computer must have a sound card that can provide a sample rate of 150 KHz. Some laptops have a maximum sample rate of 96 KHz and cannot provide the full bandwidth to demodulate the WBFM signal

Assembled in my Electronics Lab, the artwork is printed on glossy photo paper and applied to the front and back panels and there may be a few blemishes.  It includes a DC power plug.