Icom: Icom IC-2200h Deaf Receive

[KA0XR]

I recently bought a gently used, near mint condition Icom ic-2200h off eBay, but unfortunately the transceiver is basically deaf! It barely pulls in local strong signals such as our local 1000 watt NOAA Weather Radio station from 12 miles away even with the squelch dial open, registering no bars on the S-meter. Same for nearby 2m repeaters that should be full quieting. At first when listening to FM I thought it was stuck on AM but it clearly wasn't (the modulation switched automatically below 136 MHz). These observations were done using an outdoor antenna up at 20'. I hooked up a different well-used 2m radio (Alinco DR-135) to the same antenna, feedline and power supply and the improvement was night and day in favor of the Alinco.

I combed through the manual and made sure the silly S-Meter Squelch function in the initial set mode was turned off, and also performed 2 factory resets to no avail. I opened up the radio and the circuit board and components look like it was all assembled yesterday. I have a 5 year old ic-2300h which is very similar so I know my way around this family of Icom transceivers (I grabbed this 2200 to have as a spare and for its air band RX capabilities).

Wondering if anyone has experienced this issue and if there is a practical fix? There is one YouTube video that seems to cover this issue, but the narration is in an Asian/Phillipine language and of no real help.

Any help on this would be much appreciated!

 

[MTS2000des]

I'd start with the IF filters. Tune a frequency and see if the RX sensitivity jumps up when the RX bandwidth is set to NARROW. If it comes up dramatically, there is your problem: filter "rot". Common on Japanese radios from the early to mid 2000s.

 

[KA0XR]

I'd start with the IF filters. Tune a frequency and see if the RX sensitivity jumps up when the RX bandwidth is set to NARROW. If it comes up dramatically, there is your problem: filter "rot". Common on Japanese radios from the early to mid 2000s.

Thanks. I tried this while monitoring some local NB 161 MHz railroad communications and your description seems to fit. Although the signal strength seemed weaker than what I would expect for what I was monitoring, it did go from 0 to 5 S-units when moving from WB to NB. The switch also came with a dramatic improvement in received audio quality. NOAA was stronger in NB but of course much more distorted. I noticed the radio VFO scans much faster in Narrow vs. Wide.

Depressing news...is there any way to remedy IF filter 'rot'? Or is this radio basically a wideband brick/NB receiver at this point?

 

[AK9R]

...is there any way to remedy IF filter 'rot'?

Replace the filters. Google "Kenwood IF filter replacement" to get an idea of what might be involved.