ICOM M88 Programmable Land Channels?

[jngizzi]

While looking at new marine handhelds I noticed the new ICOM M88 has 22 programmable "land channels" in the 146–174MHz range.

Are these for business purposes only? Or, are we beginning to see a convergence between marine only and land radios.

It looks like a pretty nice radio.

Joe

[KC0QNB]

Why do you need a marine radio, own a boat? the 146-148 band is 2 meter ham anything else in business/marine all three services require different licenses.

[Don_Burke]

We discussed this for a while.

http://www.radioreference.com/forums...d.php?t=106176

It appears to have pretty limited applications.

[Grog]

Originally Posted by Don_Burke

We discussed this for a while.

http://www.radioreference.com/forums...d.php?t=106176

It appears to have pretty limited applications.

Not sure why you say that? I have used the HX370S (yeasu marine band + 40ch) and it would be very useful for many folks. That radio does narrowband and covers 137-174. One example would be my head RACES dude, he could use it for ham radio use, marine band use (USCG AUX) as well as monitoring local fire/EMS while on an incident (incident in his case would 99% be as USCG AUX and not RACES).

[Don_Burke]

Originally Posted by Grog

Not sure why you say that?

1. Not legally useable on MURS.

2. Not programmable below 146 MHz.

3. Not programmable to 30K0F3. (I have a couple of RP channels available to me.)

Having said that, there are some things that I would find downright handy, the most prominent one being the ability to program in a marine band channel with a PL so that I could stand by without listening to chatter until one of my own radios calls.

I see the HX370S is programmable for all of 2 meters, which is a mark in it's favor.

[Grog]

Originally Posted by Don_Burke

1. Not legally useable on MURS.

2. Not programmable below 146 MHz.

3. Not programmable to 30K0F3. (I have a couple of RP channels available to me.)

Having said that, there are some things that I would find downright handy, the most prominent one being the ability to program in a marine band channel with a PL so that I could stand by without listening to chatter until one of my own radios calls.

I see the HX370S is programmable for all of 2 meters, which is a mark in it's favor.

Not sure what 30K0F3 is, google has no hits and RR just shows this thread with your reply. The 370 does narrowband as well as "regular" bandwidths.

Not sure on the Icom, but you could always program one of the 370s channel slots with a marine channel and use the CTCSS/DCS on it since they are very customizable. You can also completely "mask" any/all of the marine channels in case you knew you would never want/need them. All I had on mine was 13,16,21,22,23 and whichever one was 155.225 since a local fire department actually uses that as their licensed dispatch frequency. Somewhat crazy to think that someone with a marine band radio could transmit on the dispatch channel (yet hopefully not cause many issues with no TX on the input or DCS).


Yeah, the 370 is by far a lot better radio than the Icom, just was not sure if you meant none of the radios in this genre were not very useful. I wish the display was different, the center can be two numbers or certain letters, some uppercase, some lowercase, some both. The 12 segment display is in the upper lefthand corner and scrolls if you program enough segments that it overfills the avaiable screen area.

But, the ham radio brother (VX170) only has six spots anyway, so however they can fit it in works for me.