brusso99
Member
I recently got a great deal on a PCR-2500 from an excellent shop (gigaparts.com). I was very excited to own this radio because of all the great things that you can do with it. I love to try new projects. I got the radio in just two days ground from them, very fast service.
When it was sold to me i was told p25 board was installed, that was not the case. Gigaparts reviewed the call and offered me very nice customer service on the issue. A very reduced price P25 board, A full refund with call tag, Or 100 dollars cash. It's nice to see this kind of service today.
I asked for a few days to evaluate the offer and they said no problem.
When i was looking at this i wanted full range coverage all modes(without Cell). which this is NOT!! I p25 on another radio would have been nice as well but i have 996xt and 396xt uniden so who needs a third.
I wanted to beable to connect my many homebuilt antenna projects and use diversity to figure which was better.
So.. What i learned about this very odd and very poor unit..
1. as stated in specs you cant use the sub radio for the same coverage as the main unit..
This presents a number of issues as your antenna is always on the wrong port and it seems that more so than not i wanted to use a frequency on the radio i could not access and had to swap the antenna's around.
2. There is no SSB over 1300MHZ, so as from the factory its limited for SAT's that use this..
I found that you can start cutting out diodes to make this fix, i did not.. i did notice that trunk pcr and pro pcr allow you to select ssb modes with no modes. I cant be sure that is what i was getting but perhaps its a work around
3. The Block on this radio starts well into the public safety band in my area, the radio is useless for any kind of trunking tracking at least in my area even with trunk pcr. I called icom about this and they said it was the law, i let them know that the GRE's, Radio Shacks and Unidens dont have this area around 868 blocked and they accused me of buying those radios from out of the country. They dont get it.. So limited public safety comms in my area.
4. The final straw for me, They BLOCK all kinds of freqs abouve 1.5GHZ.. they have no answer as to what they have blocked and why but there are plenty of gaps there.. That was it for me, so even at 559 dollars for a pcr-2500 the radio is worth less.
5. Software support, almost none. i dont see icom doing anything more with this product, they have already disco'ed the pcr versions and i suspect the r versions will be next so i dont expect anything more to support this radio to come out. Third party software is costly and software like Ham Radio Deluxe dont want to even bother supporting it.
6. Diversity Mode, when i connected two antenna's i got added noise from this mode. i also saw the unit go nuts between two antennas when recieving weather sat at 137, so i had to turn that off. Its not a good reason to buy a 2500 over a 1500..
7. Use with an amp, I tried using an inline amp for sattellite recieve and what i ended up with was FM radio clear as day all over 2.1GHZ. perhaps an issue, perhaps not.. still annyoing because people with AOR units say they do this all the time and the general word is this radio is deaf over 1300 anyway. Guess thats True.
8. I had a host of other small issues, from drivers to the unit crashing, additionaly the recieve was noisy compared to 996xt on 800 mhz same antenna. you will go nuts switching out antennas on this. they could have put an hf and vhf connector on it.
My Eval on this Unit
Dont Buy an American Version of this radio, its not worth it and its been crippled in a number of ways.. I have never felt so ripped off by a company till now (ICOM). Thank god i purchased from a good source, Gigaparts.
If you want to trunk with this, you need to get one unblocked, then get trunk pcr.. thats almost 1000 dollars for a function you can do with a sub 300 dollar scanner, why bother..
if you want digital trunking (p25) thats a 400-500 dollar scanner..
Keep in mind that its not going to work as well as a trunking scanner.
After spending a few days with this, i believe that the best option if you want this unit is to get an unblocked unit (R) with faceplate from ebay. If you want to run trunk PCR dual radio, P25..
Or Better
Get a sub 500 dollar unblocked 1500... I dont believe that the dual radio, diversity feature or P25 is a reason to spend almost 400-500 dollars more on this.
the American BLOCKED 2500 is not worth the price vs an Unblocked 1500.. for the price of a 2500 with limited sub unit you can have two unblocked 1500 units. and more options, just no access to p25 on board.
You will not be happy with this unit. I was not.. I tried everything to keep this unit because its a great deal. but not with the massive amount of blocking they did to it and its other quarks.
now if i can find out if i can get ssb via software or a mod on a 1500 i would go that way.
Thanks
Hope this Saves you the pain.
When it was sold to me i was told p25 board was installed, that was not the case. Gigaparts reviewed the call and offered me very nice customer service on the issue. A very reduced price P25 board, A full refund with call tag, Or 100 dollars cash. It's nice to see this kind of service today.
I asked for a few days to evaluate the offer and they said no problem.
When i was looking at this i wanted full range coverage all modes(without Cell). which this is NOT!! I p25 on another radio would have been nice as well but i have 996xt and 396xt uniden so who needs a third.
I wanted to beable to connect my many homebuilt antenna projects and use diversity to figure which was better.
So.. What i learned about this very odd and very poor unit..
1. as stated in specs you cant use the sub radio for the same coverage as the main unit..
This presents a number of issues as your antenna is always on the wrong port and it seems that more so than not i wanted to use a frequency on the radio i could not access and had to swap the antenna's around.
2. There is no SSB over 1300MHZ, so as from the factory its limited for SAT's that use this..
I found that you can start cutting out diodes to make this fix, i did not.. i did notice that trunk pcr and pro pcr allow you to select ssb modes with no modes. I cant be sure that is what i was getting but perhaps its a work around
3. The Block on this radio starts well into the public safety band in my area, the radio is useless for any kind of trunking tracking at least in my area even with trunk pcr. I called icom about this and they said it was the law, i let them know that the GRE's, Radio Shacks and Unidens dont have this area around 868 blocked and they accused me of buying those radios from out of the country. They dont get it.. So limited public safety comms in my area.
4. The final straw for me, They BLOCK all kinds of freqs abouve 1.5GHZ.. they have no answer as to what they have blocked and why but there are plenty of gaps there.. That was it for me, so even at 559 dollars for a pcr-2500 the radio is worth less.
5. Software support, almost none. i dont see icom doing anything more with this product, they have already disco'ed the pcr versions and i suspect the r versions will be next so i dont expect anything more to support this radio to come out. Third party software is costly and software like Ham Radio Deluxe dont want to even bother supporting it.
6. Diversity Mode, when i connected two antenna's i got added noise from this mode. i also saw the unit go nuts between two antennas when recieving weather sat at 137, so i had to turn that off. Its not a good reason to buy a 2500 over a 1500..
7. Use with an amp, I tried using an inline amp for sattellite recieve and what i ended up with was FM radio clear as day all over 2.1GHZ. perhaps an issue, perhaps not.. still annyoing because people with AOR units say they do this all the time and the general word is this radio is deaf over 1300 anyway. Guess thats True.
8. I had a host of other small issues, from drivers to the unit crashing, additionaly the recieve was noisy compared to 996xt on 800 mhz same antenna. you will go nuts switching out antennas on this. they could have put an hf and vhf connector on it.
My Eval on this Unit
Dont Buy an American Version of this radio, its not worth it and its been crippled in a number of ways.. I have never felt so ripped off by a company till now (ICOM). Thank god i purchased from a good source, Gigaparts.
If you want to trunk with this, you need to get one unblocked, then get trunk pcr.. thats almost 1000 dollars for a function you can do with a sub 300 dollar scanner, why bother..
if you want digital trunking (p25) thats a 400-500 dollar scanner..
Keep in mind that its not going to work as well as a trunking scanner.
After spending a few days with this, i believe that the best option if you want this unit is to get an unblocked unit (R) with faceplate from ebay. If you want to run trunk PCR dual radio, P25..
Or Better
Get a sub 500 dollar unblocked 1500... I dont believe that the dual radio, diversity feature or P25 is a reason to spend almost 400-500 dollars more on this.
the American BLOCKED 2500 is not worth the price vs an Unblocked 1500.. for the price of a 2500 with limited sub unit you can have two unblocked 1500 units. and more options, just no access to p25 on board.
You will not be happy with this unit. I was not.. I tried everything to keep this unit because its a great deal. but not with the massive amount of blocking they did to it and its other quarks.
now if i can find out if i can get ssb via software or a mod on a 1500 i would go that way.
Thanks
Hope this Saves you the pain.
