I need some help here,
I'm going to buy a hand held radio but have never owned or used one. The radio is mostly going to be used as a backup & a base station for our airstrip. Some have VOR navigation on them. That really isn't that important to me but is it worth the extra $?
Aircraft Spruce has the ICOM and YAESU. They seem to range from $200-400. That's within the budget.
Somebody steer me in the right direction
Thanks
Sam

I would take this advice with a grain of salt. In another life I was heavy into Ham Radio. The only sand state radio that ever broke on me was an Icom. Then, when I bought my Luscombe it came with an Icom handheld. It didn't even last the whole flight home. On the other hand I never broke a Yaesu. If Collins built a handheld with a pair of 6146s in the PA I would own one of them. Might not be all that handy though.

Hard to go wrong with anything made by Icom. Don't bother with the radios that offer VOR capability. Basic Comm is all you need.

MTV

Oops, Mister 701 posted at the same time as me.....and we disagree

I have an Icom A5 that I've owned for fifteen years? or so. Been riding around in the seat pocket of the plane. Except for outings at OSH to listen to traffic, etc.

Then I bought this PA 11...no electrics. Took the Icom out, dusted it off and fired it up. Works fine, though I had to install an external antenna to get decent comm with the tower here. Been using it to get in and out of Delta airspace for nearly a year now and no problems.

Get the AA battery pack, and carry spare AA batteries. The rechargeables don't seem to hold a charge well.

MTV

I use the sportys sp-400 as my primary radio in my non-electric J3. Works well enough for a handheld as a backup. But I'm thinking about eventually upgrading to something with a tiny bit more power, and a permanent installation.

I have the iCom which predates the A5 and it is still kicking. Have no idea how old it is. I agree the VOR is window dressing.

Get the AA battery pack, and carry spare AA batteries. The rechargeables don't seem to hold a charge well.

My iCom had the rechargeable battery on it (NiCad I think) and when it died I went w/ the AA battery pack. I use the Rayovac hybrid rechargeables and they work well and hold a charge far better than the regular rechargeables, but do not store as long as the regular Kirkland or Duracell AA's.

i Com has been good to me over the years.

The Icom IC-A6....worth the $250 bucks!

I have 20 or so of them. We use these for our Heli ski operation in Alaska. Just get the extra battery as these last about 6 -8 hours or so in continuous use.

Pay attention to charge time for best battery function.

The IC-A110 is a great base station and you can leave it on plugged in 24 hours a day. I have 3 of them.

Great radios!

Akt

aktahoe1 wrote:The Icom IC-A6....worth the $250 bucks!

Great radios!

I'll also second the IC-A6. I was able to find a lightly used one on Craigslist from a student pilot who gave up flying. Came with extra batteries and headset adapter for less than $200. Keep an eye out for deals. Easy to use and transmits receives/well. The upgraded lithium battery seems to last forever.

I have an old Icom A3 that stills works great. In my mind you can't go wrong with Icom or Yaesu. The Yeasu's tend to have more features and are a bit harder to use. Icoms are more simple and pretty easy to use.

I picked up a used Vertex/Yaesu VXA-710 for $150 on ebay last summer and have been very happy with it. I primarily use it in a J-3 with a headset adapter and PTT button, either directly to a Lightspeed Zulu headset or through a Sigtronics SPO-22 intercom. The 710 is a fairly basic radio that includes presets and VOR capability, though I've never tried the latter. The previous version also worked as a ham radio, but unfortunately they dropped that in the 710 and just support aviation radio, weather radio, FM radio, and "business radio".

With just the standard whip antenna, I get decent reception and transmission up to around 5-10 nm out, though sometimes I need to turn broadside or hold the radio out the door to pick up AWOS (I think the engine block blocks it). It doesn't work well much further than that, though it would be adequate in an emergency. I called a tower once to fly through their class D and was told "we can barely understand you. Click once if you want to land, click twice if you want to overfly". I've heard it is much better with an external antenna.

You will have to be careful about cable routing though, especially in a small cockpit. If one of the wires to the headset runs alongside the antenna (instead of going out perpendicular to it), you get fairly bad feedback squeal every time you transmit. I've come up with a system of putting the radio in the seat back pocket and routing the cables a certain way, but it falls out of position and I'll get the squeal sometimes.

Before the VX710, I bought an Icom A14, but had severe issues with feedback squeal every time I hit the PTT button no matter what how I routed the wires. There is some discussion online about how to fix this with common-mode chokes or impedance-matching transformers on the cable and I know of at least one local person who has made it work, but I didn't want to deal with the hassle, so I just returned it. I think the story is that Icom used an input amplifier that does not adequately load the low-impedance mics used on aviation headsets. The A24 has the same problem, but I have been told that A3/A22 and previous radios do not (and the datasheets suggest that that is the case, as the input impedance is 150 Ω for the old units, >100 kΩ for the newer ones).

Icom is definitely ahead of Yaesu in user interface design. The unit I have has a horrible interface with very confusingly labeled buttons and I sometimes forgot how to use it and just have to press buttons until it gets into the mode I want. The newest generation of Yaesu radios they were demoing at EAA last week are vastly improved.

I should also say that Yaesu has extremely good support. The rep at EAA is super nice and extremely knowledgeable about all aspects of their product line - aviation, marine, and amateur. The last two years I stopped by their booth at EAA with questions, I walked away with free stuff - headset adapter cables, chargers, hats, etc...

Ethan

Ethan,

Good info, thanks.

A "trick" I was given by an avionics shop was to find a 121.5 ELT antenna that's been removed from another airplane and replaced with a 406 ELT.

Those 121.5 ELT antennas are cheap and work fine as external antennas for your handheld.

MTV

I have an Icom, one of the smalle ones with not many keys. I find it works well but it is not very intuitive when it comes to operating it because its loaded with scan, memory, etc. BS that I forget how to use.

Vertex/Yaesu VXA-220, added a BNC adapterso I could plug into the aircraft antenna though the rubber duckie works fine, modded the headset plug to take a helicopter headset (no idea why airplanes still use that archaic two-plug system - mine don't). 10+ years, I upgraded the battery pack.

I see the updated Yaesu FTA-230 now has the BNC antenna as standard. $188 at AS.

One word of caution for those removing the mini whip for external antenna: Never transmit without an antenna attached. I've always heard that without the extra resistance the output diodes can be damaged, or something along those lines. Newer radios may be designed to prevent damage from this, I'm not sure.

I have an ICOM set up with an external antenna, head set adapter and push to talk switch in my Taylorcraft and it is a set up that I would not change. I also have it connected to a small sealed 12 volt battery in the cockpit so I don't have to worry about the battery charge. This outfit works better than the panel mounted radio that I had in my Pacer before I acquired the Taylorcraft. I'm very pleased.
Charles

I have a Vertex Pro V and it has worked well as my back up.

I have a Standard/Vertex (predecessor name to Yaesu) which I've had for about 11 years. Sturdy like a tank--I think I could drop it from 1000' and it wouldn't break. I have an adapter to plug it into my airplane's antennas, which makes a huge difference in both transmission and reception. But it's not user friendly. If I needed to use all of its features, I'd have to review the instruction manual again. It's easy enough to use it as a back up transceiver, but using it as a VOR receiver takes too many key strokes which aren't logical.

Last year at OSH, I was looking at both Yaesus and Icoms, because I thought I was going to buy a new one--my radio's rechargeable battery stopped holding a charge. If I had, it would have been an Icom--way easier to use. But the battery vendor just happened to have a new and better battery for my radio, so I spent $25 bucks instead of $150 or more.

Cary