Icom ic-w2a problems

[fireted]

hi, just got my ham radio tech license and a ham i know ( the only ham i know) gave me a old icom ic w2a HT. all I had to do was get a new batt for it so finally yesterday I got the new batt ( only took 2 weeks from order date ) and hooked it to the radio and the radio worked fine. today I went to use it and all the radio will do is show a red light and not turn on even if i charge it . when i hit the power button the red light turns orange. anyone know what is going on here? did the radio die some how over night?

 

[WayneH]

Moved to the Amateur Equipment forum.

 

[Essexscan]

Do you have the manual? If so see page 2 and reset the radio first The (f) U-main key and * CLR key press them both and the the power button it should reset. Possible the internal battery hasn't charged fully and charge that new battery atleast overnight or 15 hours before you use it

 

[fineshot1]

hi, just got my ham radio tech license and a ham i know ( the only ham i know) gave me a old icom ic w2a HT. all I had to do was get a new batt for it so finally yesterday I got the new batt ( only took 2 weeks from order date ) and hooked it to the radio and the radio worked fine. today I went to use it and all the radio will do is show a red light and not turn on even if i charge it . when i hit the power button the red light turns orange. anyone know what is going on here? did the radio die some how over night?

Sorry to break the bad news to ya but its a common problem on these radios(i own 2).
The lithium battery that backs up the memories has died and i have been told by the
folks at icom once that happens its toast so when mine die they are parts radios. I
thought that icom could just replace them but apparently that's not the case.

Got mine in 1992 and they have been great portables but they don't last forever.

 

[MTS2000des]

so replacing the lithium battery won't bring it back to life? that's a first. every other Icom HT I've owned that used a lithium battery (IC02/03/04/2G/4GAT) would just lose memories. But never go comatose. Wow, what an epic fail.

Might explain why I see so many W2A's on brokenstolenradios.com aka Ebay. All of them have the famous Ecrap disclaimer "guaranteed not to be DOA but AS IS"

I had one when they first came out in 1992 and they were the cat's meow in dual band HT's until the FT530 came out in 1994/95.

To the OP, if it isn't fixable I'd unload it and buy a newer dual bander. The Yaesu FT-60 can be had for under $200 NEW with a WARRANTY and is one tough HT with lots of memories, wideband RX, does DCS and is PC programmable.

 

[fineshot1]

so replacing the lithium battery won't bring it back to life? that's a first. every other Icom HT I've owned that used a lithium battery (IC02/03/04/2G/4GAT) would just lose memories. But never go comatose. Wow, what an epic fail.

Might explain why I see so many W2A's on brokenstolenradios.com aka Ebay. All of them have the famous Ecrap disclaimer "guaranteed not to be DOA but AS IS"

I don't recall the exact scenario as it was many a year ago but it was something
to the effect that there is some cpu data that gets zero'd out and can't be corrected
even by a hard reset done by the user. Without this uncorrupted data in place the
cpu will not operate. It does seem to be a self destruct radio with this type of
problem. I think even some of the early 90's hf radios had a similar problem but
icom was able to recover them with a new replacement module but with ht's it's
not practicle due to how most of the cpu/memory is on one single board and
not a seperate module. Not cost effective I guess you could sum it up as.

 

[N8IAA]

I echo MTS2000des's words, get a FT60R. Great little ht, and not expensive. It is a ham radio built like a commercial radio.
Larry

 

[fireted]

so i guess I'm sh** out of luck? all i have is a paper wight and a brand new battery that i can never use?

 

[fineshot1]

so i guess I'm sh** out of luck? all i have is a paper wight and a brand new battery that i can never use?

I would still try the reset procedure anyway just in case the memory batt is not the problem.

If that fails to correct the problem, then call icom tech support just to confirm my story.
Maybe they came up with a fix since I last spoke to them. You may get lucky....

 

[EdCompos]

if you cant fix it then sell the good battery

 

[N4KVE]

I still own the 1st W2 sold in S. Florida. Mar. 91 About 2 years ago after not using it for a while the battery died, & all the memories vanished too. I charged the battery & did a reset. Radio came back to life & works great. Memories have never vanished again. I had to reprogram offsets etc, but the radio works like new. GARY N4KVE