8/27/2023 0 Comments Icom ic 7000 ham radio outlet![]() They re-seated the ill-fated ribbon cables in the radio, and sent it back to me with a bill for their troubles. They refused to watch the video and claimed that they were unable to reproduce the problem (I’m guessing because they only tested for a few minutes). Unfortunately, the usually-stellar Icom service center let me down on this also. For this, it went back to Icom, along with a detailed description of the problem and a video showing the symptoms over the course of several hours and several such events. Then as suddenly as it went away, the receiver would come back and it would work fine for a while…until it wouldn’t again. It would be sitting there in receive mode showing background band noise (or actual signals) and then suddenly show a zero S-meter and no noise (other than internal receiver noise) for several minutes. Occasionally, the radio would just go “deaf” on HF for several minutes at a time. The first major issue happened while I was using it in the backcountry to provide Winlink messaging for an event, about 2012 or so. In reality, if this thing died, I don’t really know what I’d replace it with there’s really no equivalent offering today, in my opinion. Like a specialty sports car, you buy it for the performance, not the reliability. I don’t really fault the radio for punching above its weight class, or Icom for pushing the envelope. That may be why it seems to have a somewhat poor reputation for being prone to failure. I think that it packs an incredible amount of functionality and performance into a very small package, and it was definitely a front-runner in that category. ![]() It has definitely seen a lot of action, and has lived life far from the safe environment of an indoor ham shack’s desk top. I’ve also used it at home, for field day, and in the back country for heavy digital modes like Pactor-3 during events, most of the time with less-than-ideal makeshift antennas. In my early SOTA days, I was hauling it up to mountain peaks with me and operating in all kinds of conditions. If you are not interested, skip the history and go straight to where I describe the latest failure and my analysis. I want to document the most recent failure for posterity, which happens below, but first I’ll cover the background. My radio has suffered several failures over its life and has let me down at critical moments. I think that it’s a fantastic radio, with a ton of stuff packed into a very small size. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with my Icom IC-7000.
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