Just received the IC-R15 4 days ago and have had the chance to use it a bit. I'll give you my first impressions below, but first will let you know a bit of my radio backgroud.
The first scanner I bought was the Radio Shack Pro-90 way back in the day, so I've been at this for a while now. I've owned mostly Uniden scanners, with the occasional GRE thrown in there, too. I also have owned an Icom IC-R2 for going on 20 years, so I am familiar with the ICOM brand just a bit.
My interests were always Air Band (Civil and Military) and public safety, so these radios suited my well for most of my scanning life. Public safety systems in my area recently went 100% encrypted, so I started looking for other things to listen to, so have now the DMR/NXDN upgrades on my Unidens, which as been interesting.
When I first learned of the Icom IC-R15 I was immediately interested. I thought that getting one would up my airband game. I love my IC-R2 to death, but it is showing it’s age in terms of scan speed, and I have gotten used to alpha tags 😉
The fast scan speed, the dual receive circuits and the recording options of the IC-R15 intrigued me, and the more I read about it, the more interested in it I became.
As airshow season is already upon us, I wanted to have this radio in-hand for it, but the North American launch seems to be far behind the Japanese/European one, June-July now according to the latest info from Icom.
So I pulled the trigger and ordered one from Europe (MhZOutdoor in Italy). It arrived 4 days after ordering, which was nice. Shipping was reasonable (30 something US dollars) and import duties were equivalent to the sales tax I would have paid otherwise. Make sure when you order from Europe that they are not applying VAT to the price. There was no issue with MhzOutdoors at all, but I have read accounts of Noth American buyers from other stores in Europe unintentionally paying the VAT tax, even though it didn’t apply to them.
Yes, I wanted this radio and I wanted it for an upcoming airshow, so I ordered from Europe despite the possibility of hassles if ever I need any warranty/recall work done on it. Be aware if you’re ordering from outside your sales region that this might become a problem for you if ever a warranty/repair issue arises.
I pre-purchased the Butel ARC-15 software so I would be ready to go off the bat, as programming a radio like this by hand looked daunting. Turns out, it is. Glad I bought it.
The Butel software currently seems to be good for entering frequencies and alpha tags, tagging the groups and banks. It doesn’t seem to offer any settings for the radio itself, such as backlight timer, record durations, or linking groups/scan edges. I may be daft and may have overlooked the feature in the software, and if so, I apologize.
OK, so I got the scanner the other day and it was packaged very nicely. Included are the radio, antenna, battery, USB-C cord, belt clip and a lanyard. Assorted manuals and the usual warranty stuff, which likely doesn’t apply to me.
The belt clip clips on solidly, and reminds me of some of the professional DMR radios that I’ve used in the past. It isn’t the super strong polymer from the Motorolas, but also this radio is pretty light. I think it’ll be just fine.
The radio is solidly built, and fits in my hand perfectly. The buttons seem to be high quality, and the middle 4-way switch clicks nicely on press. I do find the 4-way switch to be on the small size for my big, fat hotdog fingers/thumbs, but I think that might be a me-thing. Also, they need to make the keypad small because the radio is small. Not a big deal, I think I just need more practice.
Charged up the battery and turned it on. I was first struck by how clear and crisp the display was. It reminded me of some of the professional Motorola radios I’ve seen, white background and clear, crisp text. Very nice.
I played with it a bit, then decided to upload my Butel file to it. This turned out to be more complex than I was anticipating, but I think it comes down to the fact it’s a new system to me. I’ll write more about it later, but even I figured it out after about 10 minutes or so.
OK, local airband frequencies loaded in and let’s give it a go!
It scans like a dream. It’s fast, it’s sensitive and the audio is clear and crisp. It receives signals my BCD436HP is deaf to, so that is a nice thing. I expected that, of course, as my Icom IC-R2 also is very sensitive in the air band, too.
The dual watch feature is great, too, as you can have two different frequencies/groups/linked groups/bands scanning/searching at the same time. The radio steps through these very quickly, too. So, so quickly. Compared to my IC-R2, this is going from an Oxcart to the A-12 😉 (avgeek joke).
I like it with the dual watch, I can scan one group and do basically a VFO search on the other. I can also set up recording and record both do different files, simultaneously, so I can go back and see what I’ve found.
When both receive circuits are active on a transmission, it is like listening to two different speakers at once, but coming out of once source. I need to turn my brain on a bit higher power setting and concentrate a bit harder, but it can be done. I think I just need a bit of practice. You can record each to separate audio files if you need to go back and listen a bit harder.
The volume setting is one setting for the whole radio. Not sure if it could be possible, but separate volume settings for each receive circuit would be handy. (Might not be possible with just one speaker, but could be nice. Or have one circuit go out on left channel, one on the right if you have stereo speakers/headphones).
Having said all this about the dual watch, you don’t have to have two going at the same time. You can just do one, to keep things simpler if you want/need it to be.
OK, I’ve raved about it enough, now for the potential drawbacks.
I am getting a bit of spurious noise, just a bit, sometimes when I have the radio on my office desk near my computer and the stock antenna attached. It manifests itself occasionally on the airband, after a radio transmission is received, the squelch doesn’t seem to close completely, with a few seconds of noise. This doesn’t happen often (maybe 1 in every 10 tx), and goes away if I move the scanner from my desk just a few feet away. Computer off, no problem. I suspect there is something making noise inside my case or monitor that is emitting some RF interference that my scanner is having issues with.
I’ll experiment a bit with this, maybe add some shielding to the computer case.
Again, not a gamebreaker for me, as I know I have a cheap/old machine and the interference goes away with the radio 5 feet or more away. Just one of the things I noticed. Outside the office and/or outside of the house it’s no problem. I have a cluster of cellular transmitters about 300ft from my place, and I can’t detect any interference on this radio. I think its selectivity is pretty good.
The battery pack included is nice, and seems to last a long time. I had it out constantly scanning yesterday for about 7 hours and it only went from 100% down to 81%. Not bad at all! Now, it is a factory fresh battery, and this will likely go down as time goes on.
Extra batteries are pretty expensive, and so is the optional AA battery adapter thing, so if you want an extra battery, you’re looking at about 100 bucks or so. I will likely get an extra for those “just in case” moments, as I like having backups. But the included battery will likely last you for an entire airshow, the drive there and the drive back. At least for now.
Yes, it only goes up to 500mhz and doesn’t do DMR/NXDN/Tetra. That’s true. For me, not a big deal as my primary focus is civil and military air band and marine VHF. I have other radios that do those digital modes, and I’m fine with that.
I think that adding digital modes or higher frequency ranges had the potential to compromise the quality of the areas I am interested in. So, I’m ok with that.
But that’s all the negatives I have with this radio so far.
And that’s also pretty much all I have to say for the moment. I’ve only had it in-hand a couple days, but those are my first impressions. Colour me amazed, I’m very happy that I bought it.
If you are in North America and have more patience/impulse control than me, I’d say wait for it to become available here. But if you want the radio in-hand now, and are aware of “potential” drawbacks in terms of warranty, then go ahead and pull the trigger. I can say my experience buying from MHz Outdoor was great.
I hope this helps anyone who is curious about the IC-R15.
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