ICOM W32A and other handhelds
David Crawford
To the area amateurs:
As a new ham, I will be purchasing a handheld transceiver
real soon.
The spec "sheet" from the Icom website on the IC-W32A,
sounded good, but the review in the July '97 QST indicated
that outside band reception stops about 455 MHz.
So, a few questions:
Will the IC-W32A pick up reasonably well RPD (460 MHz),
Med-9 (462.95 MHz), ect?
If the IC-W32A cannot receive above 455 MHz reasonably well,
does anyone have an in-production scanner that the really
like that has wideband receive?
How much power does it take (in normal situations) to access
the Research Triangle area 440 MHz repeaters using a whip
antenna?
Thanks!
David Crawford (awaiting callsign) dcr...@vnet.net
Remove the fake callsign to reply be e-mail
Scan: The life you save may be your own!
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Gary Pearce KN4AQ
(David Crawford) wrote:
>The spec "sheet" from the Icom website on the IC-W32A,
>sounded good, but the review in the July '97 QST indicated
>that outside band reception stops about 455 MHz.
>
>So, a few questions:
>
>Will the IC-W32A pick up reasonably well RPD (460 MHz),
>Med-9 (462.95 MHz), ect?
Puzzled, I rechecked the article. Looks like they only tested the radio to
455, but it does receive well into the 500's (and 800's with cellular
blocked), and hears the RPD 460 stuff just fine (it needs a "pushbutton
mod" to open up above 450 MHz - details below). My W32A review from the
RARS Exciter is below. (BTW, congratulations again on getting that
ticket!)
>How much power does it take (in normal situations) to access
>the Research Triangle area 440 MHz repeaters using a whip
>antenna?
It's quite variable. Most of the time I run my mobile rig at 10 watts with
little trouble into the RARS 444.525, KD4RAA's 444.875 and others (5 watts
would do about the same). But it's easy to get behind a ridge or in a low
spot when you're 10 or more miles from the repeater, and the typical 35
watts of mobile high power is barely enough.
Some thoughts on HT-as-mobile:
Just about everybody starts out with an HT, using the rubber duck. That
only works pretty close to the repeater, or on high spots. Next, they add
an external antenna (usually a dual-band magnet-mount). That helps a lot
and works so well they talk a lot and kill their battery. So they add a
ciggarette lighter power connector, and maybe an external microphone, and
perhaps an external power amplifier to boost RF to 40 watts or so. Now it
looks like the HT is on life support -- all you need is a beeping heart
monitor.
This all works, though with the external antenna, many HT front ends are a
bit overloaded and subject to lots of intermod when near the hot RF areas
of town (WRAL tower, Fairgrounds, North Capitol Blvd). Some of the
external amplifiers include helical resonator filters that pass only the
ham frequencies. That reduces or eliminates the intermod, but also blocks
out-of-band reception. One company out there sells just a notch filter
centered around the 152 MHz pager frequencies, which cuts out the most
annoying intermod but leaves out-of-band available.
If you hang in there, sooner or later you get tired of the HT compromise --
plugging and unplugging the antenna, power and mic every time you get in
and out of the car, and you'll finally spring for a mobile radio to just
leave there. If you're worried about theft, choose one with an easily
removable remote control head (most of the brands have a model or two that
will do this). Put the radio under the seat, and mount the control head
easily somewhere on the dash.
==================================
Here's my W32 article:
Icom IC-W32A Mini-Review
The never-ending search for the perfect (Icom) handheld has led me to the
Icom IC-W32A, a tiny dual-bander. It's getting close. (You
Kenwood/Yaesu/Alinco/Standard guys - write your own review.)
As dual-band HTs got smaller, the shrinking real-estate on top of the radio
created a problem. It takes three knobs to control the usual
volume/squelch combo for VHF, volume/squelch for UHF, and channel/tuning.
Add jacks for antenna, power and a speaker/mic, and things get tight on the
top of smaller rigs.
Icom's first dualbander-on-a-diet was the W2A back in 1991 (the 24AT
doesn't count - it can't tune both bands at once, so it doesn't need dual
controls). They jammed all the controls on top of the radio, but they put
the VHF volume/squelch shaft so close to the antenna connector that it was
hard to turn. The next generation W21A still had three knobs, but somewhat
better ergonomics. But the competition was getting smaller still. There
just wouldn't be room.
So Icom and the other manufacturers pulled one of the three knobs off the
top of the radio, and everybody went off in different directions as they
tried to figure out how to double up on the functions of the remaining two
knobs. The result is that you probably can't just pick up a friend's HT
and use it anymore, unless it happens to be on the right channel and have
the right volume setting already.
Icom went through some particularly tortured control combinations in the
short-lived Z1A and W31A before arriving at a workable combination in the
W32A. Those older radios put the squelch controls for each band on the
outside rings of each shaft, and divide the inside ring between volume duty
and channel duty. The Z1 forces you to find and push a "function" key
before you can adjust the volume (a real stupid idea). The W31 lets you
program those shafts to be either volume or channel, and then you have to
hold the function button use the opposite function (not as stupid, but
inconvient).
I have a Z1, and kept wishing that they hadn't wasted that outside ring on
the squelch control. Sure, squelch is a diddler's delight as a control,
but you really don't have to adjust it much. Volume control is much more
important.
Well, someone at Icom must have been listening inside my brain, because
that's just what they did. The ring on each outer shaft of the W32
controls volume - easy to reach and adjust. The center knob controls
frequency (and other functions through the SET menu).
To change the squelch level, you have to hold a function key and rotate the
center knob. But, among the 8 levels of squelch settings, there's
something called "AT," or as the manual describes it, an "automatic level
adjustment with a noise pulse count system." I don't know what that is,
but it seems to work pretty well. I'm now happy with the compromise on
limited real-estate.
Something else I'm happy about is memories - 100 per band. 100 memories on
2 meters is just barely enough for what I want to do, which is program
every 2 meter repeater and simplex channel into a memory (there are 100 of
the beasts).
Why do that? Because it's the only way to easily scan all the 2 meter FM
channels. The band plan is too convoluted for easy scanning using "band
limits." Repeaters down by 145.11 - 145.49 are in 20 kHz steps. Then
there's a big gap in the band, until you reach the repeaters and simplex
from 146.4 to 147.6, and those are on 15 kHz channels. So you're choices
are to scan just one part of the band efficiently, or scan too much of it
at 5 kHz steps, very inefficiently. Unless you can program every channel
into memory.
There's just one thing I'd like to see in addition that the W32 doesn't do
- "bank" the memories, or group them and let me turn banks on and off. The
local repeaters would be in one bank, and the rest of them would be in
another. I could then choose to scan just the local machines, or all of
them. You might have your own favorite plan for banked memories.
(Why do I want to do all that scanning anyway? How do you think I got the
reputation for being everywhere at once?)
And now, some of the other interesting touches in this radio:
Alpha names - you can program the display to read an 8-character text name
for memory channels. Great for those lesser-used memory channels when you
can't remember why you programmed it. But I dread the day when we stop
calling it "six-four" and start calling it "channel nine."
Weather Channels - there's a separate "band" for tuning the NOAA weather
channels from 162.40 - 162.55. They read out only in channel numbers from
1 thru 10, not in frequencies. And the order is strange: Ch. 1 is 162.55,
Ch. 2 is 162.40, Ch. 3 is 162.475, Ch. 4 is 162.425, and it goes up from
there. That follows the order of "popularity" of the NOAA channels, but
will seem odd to hams used to dealing with real frequencies.
Frequency coverage is wide, but not quite as wide as earlier models (there
may be some mods needed for wide coverage):
108-136, with a real AM detector.
136-200 (I haven't tested the sensitivity in the upper reaches of that
band,, but it doesn't hear the potent ch. 11 video carrier on 199.25, so I
suspect it's kind of deaf up there).
300-400 (again, no sensitivity measurements, and there's an FM detector,
although much of the military aviation activity in this band is AM).
400-600. Here, the TV carrier test shows sensitivity up to the low 500's,
but it can't hear channel 30 (in Middelsex) at 567.24 - that carrier bangs
into my AOR 3000A scanner.
600 - 1000. No hint of the channel 40 carrier at 627.26, but it hears the
800 MHz public service stuff well. The cellular band is blocked (big deal,
it's all going digital anyway). It hears a 940 MHz system well.
It's a small radio, but has big buttons. The speaker is on the small side,
with only fair fidelity and volume. Transmit audio is kind of bassy and a
little muddy.
Transmitting on VHF will finally mute the UHF receiver, and vice versa. It
took Icom forever to figure this out. With the W2A and W21A, if you were
transmitting on VHF and somebody came up on UHF, you blasted that sound out
your transmitter.
You can set different CTCSS tones for transmit and receive. The only radio
I've encounterd before that did this was the Radio Shack HTX-202. I don't
think I've ever really wished I could do that, but now I can.
Automatic Repeater Offsets - Kenwood has done this for years. Icom just
learned how to track the radio with the band plan, and shift the
transmitter offset up or down depending on what part of the band you're in.
But the band plan they used must have been the ARRL's, which still calls
for "linear translators" between 145.11 and 145.19. So the W32A won't set
an automatic offset there. Icom, get a clue. There are no linear
translators except on the OSCARS, so this part of the band is full of
repeaters.
But they make up for that faux pas with this feature - when it's time to
program a memory, you dial it into the VFO, then push some buttons to start
putting it into memory. But part way into that process, as you are
selecting which memory channel you want to use by dialing across the
existing memory channels, the display SHOWS YOU WHAT'S ALREADY BEEN
PROGRAMMED in each channel. Now that is extra useful.
There's a direct readout of battery voltage - at least I thought there was.
Turns out it only reads in .5 volt increments, and not when the radio is
transmitting. So it's utility is limited. The manual says it was designed
to keep tabs on the voltage of an alkaline pack, not the nicads.
Cloning and PC programming - you can. I haven't tried it yet. You need an
optional cable.
There is no adapter to charge the battery with the little wall cube charger
when the battery is off the radio. Your option is to charge it while on
the radio, or get a rapid-charger. The rapid charger is nice, and it runs
on 12 volts, so you can use it in your car. Beware, there's a little,
loose plastic insert required to hold in different size batteries. It
falls out easily. I know. I lost mine. The replacement is $15.
DTMF "Paging" functions are GONE. Nobody except N1GMV every used them, but
they were a great idea. Your radio could be programmed with a bunch of
touch-tone codes, and would sit silently monitoring a busy channel until
someone send one of your codes. I couldn't believe this radio didn't have
the feature, but it's not on the buttons, and not in the manual. It does
have CTCSS encode and decode, with 50 tone channels instead of the usual
38.
Also missing is the ability to keep the internal speaker going when you
plug in a speaker-mic.
And finally, Icom stole Kenwood's "guide." It's a little scroll of text
across the screen that tells you what the function of a button or "set"
function is. I felt like a dork using it, but it worked.
There's more, of course, but most of the other functions are the ones we've
been using for several years.
So yes, I like the W32. It solved some vexing operational problems, and
only added a few small new ones. My W2A cost over $600 in 1991. The W32
street price is below $350.
Gary Pearce KN4AQ - the HT King.
Since that article, Jeff AC4ZO discovered a couple programming bugs -- if
you use the "CALL" memory channel a lot, you'll find that when you turn the
radio off and back on while the "CALL" channel is selected, some parameters
will change -- wrong offset, no PL. Just changing off the CALL channel and
back on will restore the correct parameters, but it's a minor pain.
MODS:
To extend the receiver and open up 800 MHz receive (cellular blocked):
-- Turn off the radio
-- Press and hold the band and squelch buttons.
-- Turn on the radio while holding these buttons,
wait for 5 seconds before you release the band
and squelch buttons.
-- Now the receiver should be opened up as far as it will go.
To enable Crossband Repeat:
-- Set the VHF and UHF frequencies you want to use.
-- "Lock" the radio by holding down the CALL/LOCK button
for two seconds.
-- Turn off the radio.
-- Hold down the SQUELCH button (above the PTT button),
the MAIN button and the BAND button.
-- Turn the radio on while holding these buttons. The "LOCK"
indicator (a key icon in the upper right side of the display)
will be flashing, and the radio will be in crossband repeat.
To disable Crossband Repeat:
-- Hold the CALL/LOCK botton down for two seconds. The "LOCK"
indicator will stop flashing, unless...
-- if the crossband repeater is in use, holding the LOCK button
won't turn it off. If you must shut it off in that condition,
press and hold the SQUELCH button, then hold the LOCK button
for two seconds, and the "LOCK" indicator will stop flashing.
==================================
73,
Gary KN4AQ