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Vintage Amateur and Military Radio Amateur/military receivers and transmitters, morse, and any other related vintage comms equipment.

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Old 1st Mar 2014, 2:49 pm   #1
milairuk
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Default Icom IC-R5 wideband Rx

I wonder if anyone here has one of these ? I just brought one second hand and sometimes it seems to set itself into "clone" mode without me having used the key combination to do this. Solution appears to be to remove the batteries for 24 hours and it seems to reset to factory settings. Perhaps this one has a fault, but would like to hear from anyone who has had this happen to them or know a way fix it ?

Thanks

John
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Old 1st Mar 2014, 11:28 pm   #2
Biggles
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Default Re: Icom IC-R5 wideband Rx

I'm not familiar with this set but has it got a memory back up battery? May require replacing if it has.
Alan.
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Old 2nd Mar 2014, 11:06 am   #3
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Default Re: Icom IC-R5 wideband Rx

I have one of these (among others) and it's one of the best compact handheld scanners about, although as usual with these tiny things the performance on HF leaves a lot to be desired, and MW reception is more or less useless. Replaced now by the similar R6. I like the absence of a numeric keypad, which means you get to the frequency you want by selecting a band, then using large tuning steps to get roughly where you want and then selecting small steps to get bang on. It feels more like a proper radio than just stabbing numbers in!
Have you tried a factory reset?
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Old 3rd Mar 2014, 3:14 pm   #4
milairuk
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Default Re: Icom IC-R5 wideband Rx

Yes, and it still plays up, however the seller has now agreed to take it back and refund if faulty, so result so far.

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Old 18th Mar 2014, 5:35 pm   #5
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Default Re: Icom IC-R5 wideband Rx

Most of my 'complex' microprocessor designs have a 'am I new' start up check where they write to the non-volatile memory when first turned on. Perhaps yours has the same thing but using volatile memory? In that case a while without power for long enough may confuse the thing, half empty memory or some such.
 
Old 18th Mar 2014, 6:47 pm   #6
Biggles
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Default Re: Icom IC-R5 wideband Rx

Might just have been a flat memory cap which has now charged up enough to retain the data it was meant to hold. I have a Realistic mobile scanner which relies on being connected to the vehicle battery to retain its memories. It loses it's brain after a few weeks if you leave it disconnected.
Alan.
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Old 18th Mar 2014, 7:50 pm   #7
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Default Re: Icom IC-R5 wideband Rx

If it is a backup "memory capacitor" [or battery] it's worth checking and replacing. They're known to leak with age.

[At least it doesn't sound like you have one of the first-generation ICOMs where a significant slice of the operating-code for the microprocessor was held in battery-backed RAM: Battery dies with age, radio suffers the electronic equivalent of Alzheimer's and is declared BER].
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Old 18th Mar 2014, 11:32 pm   #8
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Default Re: Icom IC-R5 wideband Rx

They were a pain, but a friend of mine left one of his old Icoms in a cupboard for a few years and it was brain dead when he tried to use it again. He contacted Icom UK (or maybe Waters and Stanton, not sure) and his board was re-activated and fitted with a new battery for about £50 I think. That was only last year, so hats off to Icom.
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Old 19th Mar 2014, 12:20 am   #9
Biggles
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Default Re: Icom IC-R5 wideband Rx

Just a quick word of warning to anyone attempting to change a solder-in memory retention battery type. A mate of mine was doing this in the workshop and the battery exploded. I think it was a small lithium type (about N cell size) but it went off like a cracker and I suspect that it was shorted during de-soldering. I remember a warning leaflet came round at work about potential explosions when they first became popular.
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