R8600 Shout-out to R8600 owners . . . how are you using yours?

[Teotwaki]

I have used my first 8600 so much I bought another when Main Trading Company in Texas had them on sale, no Cali sales tax and free shipping. I did set the first one up for remote access using SDR Control for iPad. SDR-Control for iPad
Another thing that you can do is to take the phono jack antenna input and add a transformer dongle to make it 50 Ohms compatible. Then while remote controlling the radio you can select from the two 50 ohm HF antennas and the VHF/UHF N connecter input.

The dongle build thread is here: R8600 - ICOM R8600 antenna port #3 - Making it useful

 

[bagmouse7]

It is a great receiver, and it is my most frequently used radio.
While the Icom software could use some (alot) of updating, it does work well and it provides some of the fastest and most flexible scanning available.
Sure the 8600 could use some more digital decode modes, but there are plenty of ways to decode digital modes if that is what you enjoy.
I mostly use my 8600 for Airband and Rail monitoring using the Icom software, it runs for hours or days at a time.
I also have an IC-RC28 remote which allows control of the 8600 when using the Icom software, which is really nice....
While it is expensive, it actually provides a great value and I think it actually IS well worth the price.
If I had to strip the shack down to 1 radio the R8600 would be it.

 

[xms3200]

bagmouse 7.. How is the IC-8600 for VHF air, is it pretty sensitive, I have heard conflicting replies, what is your opinion.

 

[Napalm]

bagmouse 7.. How is the IC-8600 for VHF air, is it pretty sensitive, I have heard conflicting replies, what is your opinion.

It's amazing, I don't have any empirical data for you lol. But I can hear towers that are non-existent on other radios on the same antennas.

 

[xms3200]

That is great to hear. Looking at the specs, it looks like sensitivity on the IC-8600 for VHF air is 5uv, while the IC-R15 is 1uv, makes me think the IC-R15 is more sensitive, but interesting to note the 8600 is a performer.

 

[KB2GOM]

That is great to hear. Looking at the specs, it looks like sensitivity on the IC-8600 for VHF air is 5uv, while the IC-R15 is 1uv, makes me think the IC-R15 is more sensitive, but interesting to note the 8600 is a performer.

Great! Okay, really dumb (donkey) question: if you have a group of frequencies in memory, can you direct the 8600 to scan them, or do you just have to hang on one frequency at a time?

 

[kruser]

Great! Okay, really dumb (donkey) question: if you have a group of frequencies in memory, can you direct the 8600 to scan them, or do you just have to hang on one frequency at a time?

Yes you can.
Although the 8600 is not a scanner, it works pretty good for scanning type functions.

 

[bagmouse7]

bagmouse 7.. How is the IC-8600 for VHF air, is it pretty sensitive, I have heard conflicting replies, what is your opinion.

Sensitivity is really good (enough), but best part is that the audio recovery is excellent (it sounds fantastic) and when scanning it resumes with 0 delay (as well has having a very fast scan rate) so scanning large lists for frequencies is quick.
The R8600 is certainly build for scanning lots of frequency's with a very rich feature set for scanning.
In addition to the normal bank scanning and bank linking, the 8600 adds a "scan select" group number to each memory channel.
You can then select the groups you want to scan and then select (no not) the channels based on the "scan select" tag number.
These 2 functions together (band link and select scan) allows you really select exactly what you want to scan.

 

[Napalm]

Sensitivity is really good (enough), but best part is that the audio recovery is excellent (it sounds fantastic) and when scanning it resumes with 0 delay (as well has having a very fast scan rate) so scanning large lists for frequencies is quick.
The R8600 is certainly build for scanning lots of frequency's with a very rich feature set for scanning.
In addition to the normal bank scanning and bank linking, the 8600 adds a "scan select" group number to each memory channel.
You can then select the groups you want to scan and then select (no not) the channels based on the "scan select" tag number.
These 2 functions together (band link and select scan) allows you really select exactly what you want to scan.

Oooh I didn't know or forgotten about scan select. That's neat.

To the other poster, it's not just about sensitivity. The handhelds can get easily overloaded by nearby transmissions. I have a 500W public safety tower within a mile of me and other radios get swamped. The 8600 can listen to a channel 7 kHz up with no ill effects.

 

[G8OEO]

A while back I tried using my IC7300 fed from the 10.7MHz of my 8500 to get some idea of how aircraft comms would sound on this sort of radio. It was ok but I was disappointed by the degree of squelch hang at the end of each transmission.
The radio seemed slow to close the squelch, with a burst of noise before the audio was completely muted.

It seems no amount of messing with the RF gain and squelch setting would help, so I would be very interested to hear how the 8600 performs in this respect with both AM and FM comms.