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This page updated 2004.03.20
Icom[1] is a Japanese manufacturer of solid, functional two-way radio products. They began in the 1950s by producing amateur radio equipment and have since expanded to land-mobile, marine, and aviation radios and related products. Their amateur portable IC-2AT was a fixture for years and could be found in almost every ham operator's hands walking around a hamfest in the 1980s.
The V8000 mobile radio, descended from their F121 commercial mobile, was introduced in 2002 and quickly became a favorite of hams and railfans. The hams love its 75 Watt power output rating and large LCD display, while the railfans love its very sensitive receiver for pulling in distant trains and defect detectors.
I purchased my V8000 in May of 2003 for both applications, but especially in anticipation of my annual pilgrimage to the Dayton Hamvention in Ohio. I wound my way alongside the tracks in the south and through big railroading towns like Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, Louisville, Indianapolis, and Cincinatti. It served me well during that trip and continues to do so every day that I use it. I highly recommend this radio to anyone who wants a great amateur mobile transceiver or a great railfanning receiver.
If you thought you'd only be truly happy with a Motorola radio, take a look at the V8000. I've been working on Motorola radios for 15 years, but it is simply too much hassle to program the things for hobby applications: set up a 12 Volt power supply next to the computer, pull out the serial cable, find the radio cable, and the r.i.b., (oh crap! the battery in the r.i.b. is dead), run the correct version of the r.s.s. and hope it runs on this particular computer. No thanks! Have fingers, will program, anywhere, any time.
The V8000 has a great receiver. The manual specifies 0.15 microvolts for 12dB SINAD. I measured mine on an IFR 1900 service monitor and it was flat across its entire tuning band. I mean from 136.01 to 174.000 the monitor output was -123dBm at 12dB SINAD and -119dBm at 20dB SINAD. I thought I was performing the measurement incorrectly, but I repeated it and also used my calibrated ear and it's true! All I know is that it hears really well. It also does a good job of withstanding much of the junk radio energy floating around in the ether.
Out of the box, the U.S. version of the radio receives from 136 to 174 MHz and transmits only in the amateur radio 2 meter band of 144 to 148 MHz, so no modifications are needed to receive railroad or marine communications. As public safety migrates to other bands or to digital systems, there won't be much else to monitor soon, although those areas still using VHF high band for public safety should find this an excellent radio for monitoring since it decodes PL and DPL squelch codes.
The large liquid crystal display is cleanly laid out and easy to read even for those with poor vision. The backlight color can be changed between green and amber, per your preference.
With 200 memory channel positions, you might either be overwhelmed or think "who in the world needs all those channels??" Fortunately, this radio smartly includes 10 banks that allow you to group together your selection of memory channels, which is extremely handy. In my case, I use bank 'A' to hold my hometown memory channels of F.E.C. railway and a local government channel of a nearby town through which the F.E.C. tracks run. I have another bank with a selection of memory channels for the areas where I drive frequently, so I don't have to spend time in the cumbersome scan lockout process. Just a few keypresses on the mic lets me select the bank that suits me and I'm in business.
Scanning or manually stepping through channels now runs through only those channels in the bank instead of all 200 memory channels, which is quite a time-saver. To revert to the entire collection of memory channels just leave the bank and go back to standard memory mode and all 200 channels are at your disposal again.
The V8000 has 2 scan modes, regular and forced (pause). See the Modes section for details.
Yes, I admit it. I have left my radios on for extended periods in the past and run down my car battery. But, the V8000 saw me coming and provided an optional power-off timer which I set to 2 hours. So if no button is pushed or knob turned for 2 hours, the radio beeps a few times and shuts itself off. Dummy-proof! The other intervals are 30 minutes, 1 hour, or disabled for continuous running.
By turning the squelch control higher than the 12 o'clock position, an attenuator kicks in which reduces the receiver sensitivity. This is handy for cutting out weak signals that can pester you or to eliminate intermodulation distortion products from nearby transmitters. That alone can make the difference between hearing a desired signal and hearing a mishmash of noise.
The V8000 can discover what PL or DPL code is being used on a particular frequency, similar to the function provided on many scanners.
By connecting a simple cable between the speaker jacks of two V8000 radios, you can clone the contents of one into the other. This is handy for setting up fleets of radios or bootstrapping yourself on your buddy's hard work in programming his. For example, if the first radio has all 90+ A.A.R. (American Association of Railroads) channels programmed in, you could clone these memory channels into your radio to save you the trouble. Then just add whatever other frequencies to your radio and you are ready to go.
The radio can be configured so that it operates ONLY on memory channels, each of which can be independently programmed to inhibit the transmitter on that channel.
Although the front-firing speaker provides serviceable audio, a mobile operation demands an external speaker. The audio quality will be much richer and will be just plain louder than the internal speaker at the same volume level. Plus, you can mount the external speaker in a more advantageous position for your vehicle. Any old 8-ohm speaker with decent sound quality will suffice, there is no need to buy the Icom speaker. I am trying to locate a wedge-shaped speaker for my Honda so that I can mount it on top of the dash under the windshield to shoot the sound at my head while I'm driving.
I did not find it cost-effective to buy the Icom serial programming cable and software for a total of $70 to program my radio. My crappy Uniden scanner has a DB9 on the rear and I use public domain software to program it all day long. But, Icom uses its CI-V interface which requires a level shifter to translate the voltage from the EIA232 serial port on your computer to the radio's open collector 5 Volt levels. They also offer a USB programming cable. A number of hardware hackers have provided cheaper alternatives if you want to construct your own or buy their offerings. A German ham's web site (DF4OR) lists these alternatives, in English to boot!
The manual that comes with the Icom V8000 is, like many translated manuals, not entirely clear. This page seeks to clarify the operation of certain key features to get you up and running quickly. I focus here on features that seem to be of the most interest or most utility. Some features of the radio seem just plain bizarre, but they probably have applicability in the commercial version of this radio.
Almost all of the control buttons on the radio control multiple functions. The radio differentiates the desired function by the duration of the button push.
On the front panel, if you touch the button briefly, the function indicated in black will be executed. If you hold the button down for 1 second or more the function indicated in green will be executed.
On the microphone, the FUNC button selects the orange functions for momentary action, but some operations still require holding down the button for 1 second or more, such as writing a frequency to a memory channel using CLR A(MW) as Icom writes it.
Generally, to store whatever you are looking at on the display, press MW once to put the radio into "get ready to store" mode, then select where you want to store it, then hold down the MW button for 1 second or more to stuff it in.
The radio has two sets of operating parameters: Initial Set and Set modes.
'Initial Set' mode allows seldom-changed settings to be edited. It is accessed by holding down the SET button while powering up the radio. The mic buttons are not recognized in Initial Set mode, only the buttons on the radio are recognized.
'Set' mode is accessed anytime by pushing the 'SET' button on the radio or the mic keypad. Both modes are the usual arrangement where you step through the settings and change what you want.
The V8000 can scan in the familiar mode in which it waits until the end of the transmission, pauses 2 seconds, then resumes scanning.
Or it can force the scan to resume after a selectable period of 5, 10, or 15 seconds. This mode is particularly useful for communications that are frequent and long, such as ham rag-chews or railroad dispatchers giving out slow orders or track warrants. At least the radio will check other channels then come back to the windbag channel if nothing else is going on.
After saving settings to the F1 and F2 mic keys, recalling those settings restores just about every setting in the radio at the time the keys were stored. This includes the 'Initial Settings', even the 'Display Type' despite what my printed manual says. Because changing Inital Settings is a bit of a pain, this can come in handy if you want one key to recall one Initial Setting and the other key to restore the Initial Setting to your favorite mode. I use mine to save my two most-used frequencies; in addition, I saved 15KC channel steps with green display color in F1 and 5KC channel steps with amber display in F2. This way I can look at the display color and know which mode it is in.
This mode is described in a confusing fashion in the manual, so I played with it until I figured it out; it didn't take too long. This feature allows you to set a transmit frequency in the radio, then shift to receive the offset frequency that is programmed with it by pressing DUP+ or DUP- on the mic. This is a little more cumbersome than their previous method of doing it, which involved simply pressing the Squelch knob to switch to the duplex frequency and open the squelch. Progress marches on.
If you simply want to monitor the input frequency to a repeater, press the MONI(ANM) button. This feature will not work outside the standard ham repeater bands.
The alphanumeric channel names are a waste of time. First, they only hold 6 characters. Second, they interfere with easy editing of settings, such as scan lockout.
The display of alpha names can be toggled per channel. Pressing SET while in alpha name display mode on that channel will command the radio to edit the current alpha name stored in the channel. Since the SET button serves to edit alpha tags and to enter 'SET' mode (which changes useful radio parameters), it is not possible to enter 'SET' mode quickly and easily when alpha names are displayed. This makes it a real pain to toggle the scan lockout setting of a channel that has an alpha tag set, so I have given up on alpha tags on this radio; Icom simply made it too difficult to change common settings. I would avoid alpha tags unless this radio is to be deployed in a dedicated application by non-technical users who won't be adjusting settings. The AlphaNuMeric display mode can be toggled per each memory channel by holding MONI(ANM) on the front panel or combining FUNC + ANM on the mic to turn off display of alpha names on that channel only.
I strongly recommend activating the transmit time-out timer. Many times in the past I have found my radio keyed unexpectedly while driving and who knows who heard what during that time. I set mine to 1 minute which is adequate for my needs. Nobody wants to hear me yap for more than a minute anyway.
Although the mic keypad buttons do nothing while transmitting, you cannot simply push the buttons to transmit TouchTones as you can with every other radio on the planet. I don't understand this operation, but there it is, so we are stuck with it. To transmit TouchTones you must first press DTMF-S on the mic, then dial the digits.
There is a substantial delay between the first button press and the transmission of the tone; this is probably a holdover from the commercial life of this radio. Fortunately, the tones are echoed out the radio speaker so that you can hear when the tones are being transmitted. I find that touching a TouchTone digit button and waiting for the transmitter to key, then dialing the digit string works well enough.
When you are finished transmitting TouchTones, press DTMF-S again to return the mic keys to radio control mode. Yes, at times this radio is a bit too much like operating a desktop computer, but I still like it a ton!
Here's what an Icom V8000 looks like up close and personal. From the Icom web site, as you might expect.
It's solid and compact, more like a heat sink with a radio attached. The speaker is behind the grill on the right side. Many of the functions can be accessed through the front panel buttons. The knobs, from left to right, include Squelch, Volume, and Channel.
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