Icom R5 (IC-R5) Questions

[safetyobc]

I am very interested in this receiver and have been for quite some time. I have almost bought one several times but have always opted to go for other radios like the BC246T, BR330T, Pro-97, and even the VR120.

Still I want to own an Icom R5. I have a BCD396T and a BCT15 now for trunking and digital but would like the R5 for it's portability and other features it has. I have a few questions that I have overlooked in the readings I have researched.

Does the R5 have a backlight, and if so how bright is it?

How does interference affect the R5 in VHF-High (150 to 160 MHz).

Can anyone compare the VR120 to the R5? I am familiar with the 120 performance and operations.

Also compared to sensivity how would an R5 compare to a Pro-97, etc.? I know scan speeds, etc. will be better on the 97, but how about recieve?

Thanks for any information you can offer.

matt

 

[frazpo]

ic-r5, practical?

Matt,

I just sold my icr5 on ebay and purchased a bc246t. The r5 was great in many ways. For example i love to storm chase so having a radio with all the local radio and tv stations plus ham repeaters in one radio was great. Reception was great in all bands. I live in Missouri and actually listened to the BBC with the stock rubber antenna! Plus other foreign shortwave stations. I never had any programming software, I did it by hand. That was tricky. If you let the radio sit for a week you might as well break out the manual. THe backlight is good, you can even adjust the contrast. It is green by the way. So now the reason I traded. I wanted something that can be easily adjusted and programmed without a computer, plus I wanted a trunktracker. In alot of ways it just wasn't practical for my use. I consider myself savvy with electronics but this little guy put me to the test. Hope this helps.

Tim

 

[MarkWestin]

As far as I am concerned, the two good features of the IC-R5 are its small size and that it runs on two AA batteries.

The R5 has a green backlight, and it is slightly brighter than my BR330T, but not as bright as my BC246T (but almost). The display only is illuminated.

The R5 has really bad selectivity in the 150-160 range. Any pager in the area will completely blow it away. The only way I have found it useful is if you know the CTCSS/DCS for the frequency that you want. If the CTCSS is entered, the radio is much more useful.
I sent the radio back to ICOM service for the selectivity problem, but they said it was performing normally and sent it back to me.


You can only scan 1 bank (100 channels) at once or all banks at once, you can't choose to scan two or three banks at once. You have to enter your frequency into one of the 1000 memory channels, then assign it to one of the memory banks. If you want the same frequency in more than one bank, you would have to enter it multiple times in the memory channels.

Scanning speed is very slow. It plods along at about 10 or 15 channels per second.

Sensitivity is quite good, it is better than several of my scanners. (keep the selectivity in mind, however).

I have the USA market model.

The accessories for the ICOM radios are very expensive compared to accessories for other brands of radios.

The R5 and other ICOM USA market models have several (maybe numerous) frequency holes at odd frequency ranges (probably multiples of cell phone frequencies) locked out. If you want one of those frequencies, you are out of luck. The Canadian and European models do not have this problem (so I have heard).

I think that the BR330T is a much better all around radio than the IC-R5.

Would I buy the IC-R5 again? Probably not. Would I sell mine? Probably not. It does have some useful features and it is very small.

I don't have a VR120 so I can't give a good comparison.

Bottom line would be that if you want one of these, buy a non USA model (avoid the Japan Domestic version), and it would be potentially much more useful due to no locked out frequency ranges. Resale value is probably much higher for the non USA model.

Mark

 

[safetyobc]

thanks guys for your feedback.

Now I don't want one so much. lol.

I have owned a BR330T. Very fine scanner! I regret selling it.

thanks again.

 

[Turbo68]

Hello I got the ICOM-R5 a few months ago and its been put through its paces and I am happy with the performance of this little Radio and I also put up against the AOR-8200MK3,ICOM-R20,UNIDEN-396 and I only listen to the Airbands and the R5 gave the other Radios a good run and the audio is very good and I was using a DIAMOND-RH771 Antenna and a custom made Airband Antenna from POLAR.Do not be fooled by this little baby.

Regards Lino (Melbourne Australia)