Icom U82 Sport Radio Dirt Cheap

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rescuecomm

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Several distributors are selling the U82 Sport UHF ham handheld radio for about $80.00 each plus shipping. I bought two of them to replace my old Radio Shack bricks. One for my Uncle and one for me.

Bob
 

rescuecomm

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Travelers Rest, SC
Icom U82 Sport

Got them this week. Now I am going to download the software to arraign freqs in a better manner. For once I already have the correct cable.
 

jpryor

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Aug 22, 2001
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Is both the "CS-V82" software and "OPC-478/U" cable listed on the Universal Radio site required to do the computer programming? Looks like it might be easy enough without software based on the manual, if I don't worry too much about alpha tags and such.

How is the scan speed with this radio? Compared to actual RS/Uniden scanners? How well does the "bank" linking work out, easy to turn banks on and off?

What about interference/intermod, as I see this is only double conversion? And how does wide band RX perform, I'd want to plug in some frequenies in the 460 MHz to monitor as well.

Looks to be good for the price, but the 'extras' for programming and such, might just end up getting a V82 as well for the charger and battery.

Just wish they had a commercial looking unit like this in a dual band format and better (dot matrix, more charaters) alpha display . . .
 

rescuecomm

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Since the unit is a ham radio, it is very easy to program from the front panel. As to the battery packs, I had already purchased a V82 and an extra battery pack from HRO back in June, so I already had the charger. Setting the banks is done when you program the channel info such as PL, offset, etc. There are ten banks in all. You can only put a channel in one bank at a time, unlike the F43/F33, where a channel can be programmed in different banks or scan profiles. The radio will scan by bank. Not sure of the scan speed, but seems fairly fast. It does feel like its constructed more sturdily than the F43. I already had the AD119 charger(for an F30 radio) and plan to get a cup to convert it to the V82/U82 batteries. Whether you can use the sport radio as is, is up to you. For $80, what can you say. Some of the bubble pack GMRS stuff is more pricey.
 
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