Icom R3, buy or not buy?

[Jose_Pointero]

I have a guy in Japan who has offered me an unblocked R3 at a very decent price. I'm considering picking up, but I can't find any reviews on in that would indicate it will be good for what I want to use it for. Specifically:
1. Is it any good in Mil Air? Air in general?
2. How about fed frequencies?
3. In general, will it's reception be as good as say, a pro-97?
and mostly -
4. Is it any good at monitoring 900MHz-2.4GHz video?

I'm assuming its video monitoring abilities would greatly depend on the type of antenna you have connected to it, but I haven't been able to find a good review about it. And what I really want to know is how good it is at scanning in general, and what its speed is.

Basically I'm trying to decide between this, a Yupiteru MVT-7100, and a AOR-1000XLT. Which one would you get?

 

[fineshot1]

Jose,

Not sure if you tried eham or not but see the 3 reviews below on eham.

http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/1124

Good luck & hope this helps

 

[kb1ipd]

I played with the R3 a bit at the local ham shop. Fun little receiver. The video function is kinda cool, especially for wireless video on non-tv frequencies, like ATV or even news feeds from choppers (occasionally with in the range I'm told... very occasionally)

The screen also can be used as something of a bandscope. Also nifty. But bare in mind that using the screen for any period of time kills the batteries.

But it is a fun little receiver for a lot of things. Assuming you don't need trunking or anything it's not too bad for general purpose stuff.

 

[key2_altfire]

I'd jump on an R3 if I found one for a good price; right now my "main" travel receiver is an Icom R5 and I love it to pieces. However, with more and more agencies going digital, and with broadcast TV going to pure digital in Feb. 2009, a lot of the analog receivers will lose some serious usefulness. Personally I'm bracing myself for the prospect of replacing all of my scanners/receivers with digital models as they become available. Some of my local PDs JUST made the switch to P25.

 

[iMONITOR]

R3's eat batteries like candy!

 

[Jose_Pointero]

Thank you all for your input. I have decided that while the R-3 is a pretty cool device, it's not really what I want right now. I will be keeping an eye on them though and may pick one up later if they get cheap enough