Last week, my new transceiver finally got here. After charging it up for 15 hours (it has a lithium ion battery,) I cranked it up and started programming it. Apparantly, Icom has gotten many complaints about the difficulty involved in programming their radios, and they have started making it a single-button procedure. Saving my frequencies was extremely easy.

I was very dissapointed with the reception of the radio with the stock antenna on it. It seemed that it needed to be held in a different position for every frequency. I realize that this is probably a matter of RF from all the electronic equipment in my house, but no antenna should be THAT sensitive. I ordered a Maldol 21.75 inch tri-band antenna, and it works beyond my wildest dreams now. I'm hitting repeaters that I can't even hit with my base IC-V8000 and 7 foot cushcraft antenna! (and thats at 70 watts!!!) It's amazing.

It has so many features that I don't hardly know what all of them do, but I guess if you need it, it's got it. Plus, it's a tri-band transceiver, so thats always a good thing.

I'd reccomend this rig to anyone.

And, by the way, the battery life was around 18 hours, including about 4 hours (estimate) of chewing the rag on the local repeaters, and the rest of the time was spent scanning my memory channels.

told ya they (icom) had a kick-booty receiver!

Sweet radio

My first mobile rig was a icom-2000h...it lasted about 5 years and the PA went out...prolly from the reverse polarity accident, the 20 foot fall, or the homemade antennas with lack of swr checkin...so go figure BUT

the radio still worked as a scanner for me, and the best sensitivy of any receiver ive ever owned! My second mobile, a Yaesu would power off at <12.6 volts... BUT the old icom would work PERFECTLY at almost any voltage...My next radio will be a icom, im just waitin on a digital ready HT at a decent price.

best wishes and 73's









Mike Hale
Southwest Virginia Scanner Forum
http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/279029

http://scannerfrequency.cjb.net