Icom IC-V8000
For the last four or five years this radio has lived in my 2001 Prism, it was coupled to a Comet SB6 and certainly did the job for me when I was still traveling back and forth to work.
I am not one who operates repeaters, in this area most of the repeaters remain dormant during the day and evening even during heading to work, or going home times. In fact the number of times I have used a repeater in the last decade I can count on one hand. However, I did find a lot of activity on simplex, namely 52/55/58 with some long time friends on those channels.
Let’s take a look at the features of this radio and the pros out weigh the cons by a lot of benefits. You may be impressed with the fact that the final delivers 75 watts of power, but really does that make a significant difference in signal strength? If we look at this with rational thoughts you will come to the technical conclusion the difference in 50 watts and seventy-five is hardly noticeable. It amounts to 1/4 s unit in the receiver of the person you are talking to at the time.
The 1/4 s unit difference may and I say may make a difference on the long haul simplex run, but normally little to no difference will be noticed on the s meter. Does this mean you should avoid this radio, of course not there are many good features and they will benefit you in the long run.
In looking at the front panel it is simple and easy to navigate, there is a small speaker mounted in the front of the rig, not on the bottom or top, but in front and projecting the sound outward. However, I would suggest an external speaker since the fidelity of this speaker is not the greatest, but I have heard worse. The audio out put has plenty of power for the internal speaker and more then enough for the external speaker. In fact the spec sheet indicates two watts output and that is more then enough without crushing your eardrums for in shack usage.
The audio output to the speaker is adequate, however the specs indicate a 10% THD that is total harmonic distortion. I find these figures horrid, it seems most of our rigs have this figure and it appears to me we could do much with audio quality. In the broadcast profession if we had 10% distortion in audio output we would be fixing the gear.
Normal THD in the broadcast profession is less then 1% and I cringe every time I see 10% glaring at me. The human ear can detect distortion at 5%, so some is audible; you may not notice it depending on your ears.
The front panel contains a few programming buttons, an audio control that varies the loudness on the speaker and a separate manual squelch control. To me this is much better then the preprogrammed menu driven squelch in some rigs. You can adjust the manual control to just over the threshold of squelch, with menu driven rigs the squelch becomes an annoyance with its constant squelching if a signal fades.
One notation on the squelch in the 8000, you will notice on some signals, namely distant signals if you advance the squelch beyond the threshold, the s meter indication will decrease. Setting the control on the edge of threshold will indicate the maximum signal you are receiving.
There are three power levels to choose from, high, Medium and Low. With my wattmeter and running the rig on a fixed DC supply the output at the high selection was just a couple of watts below 75 claimed watts. The medium selection gave about 25 watts, give or take a couple and the low power selection produced about 5 to 7 watts.
You might ask why use this at all during the course of communications? It makes very little sense if you are running a repeater contact to pump in 75 watts when you are with in a few miles of the repeater tower. It also makes little sense if you are talking to someone on simplex and you are with in a few blocks of one another, or sitting in the driveway of a friend.
I used this feature when I was heading for home chatting with a friend of mine in Henderson, Ky and I was working in Evansville. I started off in Evansville with 75 watts, dropped to 25 when I got across the 41 bridge, down to five watts when I was within five miles or less from my friend’s house. For one thing the heat dissipation dropped way down and it allowed the final chip to cool down on the way home.
The 8000 has a fan in the back of the radio that starts as soon as you push the transmit button this is effective in keeping the heat factor down on the finals. In lesser-priced rigs they rely solely on a heat sink to dissipate the final’s heat. These rigs get very hot over prolonged usage, it does effect the drift factor of the transmit and receive frequencies.
I have had solder connections lose solder when the heat in the radio rose to melting point of the solder connections. Or, due to heating and cooling of joints they become cold solder joints and intermittent connections result.
On the mic provided with the 8000 you have a triple function keypad, your general functions in black letters and no bank selection depressed. Depress the function red button and you have another set of choices available on the same keys.
If you depress the DTMF button the pad becomes your touch-tone pad for auto phone patch, or control data for some other function. Phone patching since the advent of cell phones has really become a thing of the past, but a few still use this function.
Two other handy things for repeater users are the monitor button; this allows you to monitor the input frequency of a repeater. If you can hear the station you are working very well on the input, why use the repeater? This is your cue to vacate the machine, give some else a chance and move to simplex.
Another feature is tone scan; to me this invites a little hostility and use this with caution. Yes, you can find out the tone frequency of a repeater, or simplex user, but in so doing you may not be a welcomed guest of the repeater, or a simplex contact. P.L tones are used for a reason, in some cases to keep the interference down of two repeaters on the same channel preventing a collision or one machine brought up by users of a second machine on the same channel. In other cases some parties, or repeater owners want no one else in their qso, or the repeater is off limits to outsiders of certain radio clubs.
If the repeater, or simplex users want their qsos to be open, then the P.L. will be announced, If not, then chances are you are not welcome in the contact. Using that tone scan might create hostilities, so use it with caution, just because you have it may not be the right reason to use it.
This rig has your choice of wide band FM or Narrow band, wide is stated as 5khz deviation, and that is adequate for FM voice. Narrow is 2.5 kHz, narrows down the frequency response a little, but unless you are using one of the newer repeaters leave this on 5khz and you will not be disappointed.
I performed a comparison test between the Icom 8000 and a Kenwood 281 I had rated previously for their receiver sensitivity. The Kenwood Specs indicated in wide band FM the number of microvolts of sensitivity to be .18 and in narrow FM .22.
The Icom came in with a .15 and no mention of the narrow band FM rating; I am assuming this rating was wide band FM. However, no figures were published for the narrow mode in relation to sensitivity.
I then made an actual comparison of a distant simplex signal switching between two transceivers and this what I found. The Icom responded to a simplex signal of more then 50 miles distant, the Kenwood did not register the signal and in fact failed to break the squelch at all. On the Icom the signal was an S2, but a zero on the Kenwood.
The signal in this case was from Dale, Indiana I had no trouble copying my long time friend Dennis, N9ZPP with his two-meter beam at 60 feet. However, on the Kenwood his son in law who lives in a trailer home and has a magnetic mount mobile antenna on his roof produced no signal at all on the Kenwood. With the Icom an S2 registered and stayed steady every time he transmitted, this was indeed revealing to me.
As a further note I am using a two element 5/8 side mounted on my tower at the 70-foot level, I have no trouble with simplex over a wide radius. In fact on 52 several times during the week I may chat with Dennis, N9ZPP and Dave N9JWV, Dennis is close to 50 miles away and Dave is in the opposite direction of 30 miles. All of us have very good copy on each other and we have been doing this for years.
My next test was the use of a signal generator on 146.52 with the output power set to bare minimum, I found the Icom registered an S1 and the Kenwood showed nothing. I had a distance of about twenty feet between the rigs and the generator. Neither rig had an antenna connected at the time of this test.
Based on these tests I would say the Icom does much better on weaker signals, however the Kenwood certainly is not a bad radio and is fine for repeater use and to many degrees simplex contacts Where my tests showed it was not as good as Icom were with distant weak signals.
If you are a constant repeater operator you may never notice, or care about distant simplex signals, but for a simplex operator like myself I like the Icom much better.
As a final note many of the features of the Icom can be accessed via the hand held microphone touch pad. Not so on the Kenwood, you have to access the menu and this could be a problem if you are driving in traffic, or even on the open road. Granted, a lot of features are set and forget, but if you need to get to a function easily the mic pad really makes it simple.
The choice is yours of course, the Icom is roughly $50.00 more then the Kenwood, but for that difference you get a rugged and dependable radio. Personally, you will not disappointed.
