In article et,
says...
Wow

Thanks, Steve. I was close to buying a "new" 7100. I guess I'll look for
7000. I have one on loan right now and it is very impressive. I assumed
the 7100 would have the same build quality.

thx

bob


Steve Uhrig wrote:
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 00:55:26 GMT, "steelguitar"
wrote:

How does it stack up against modern scanners?

The R7100 is not a scanner. It is a communications receiver.

That particular model is a piece of junk. Two bad FETs,
underspecified, were installed at the factory and there is an ultimate
100% failure rate on them. Replacing them is fairly involved. We used
to service the things.

The R7000 is/was a winner. The R7100 was trash and not worth the
postage to ship them. Same with the R9000 in all versions.

The R8500 is a pretty nice little receiver for the price and is
reliable and reasonably rugged. We sold many hundreds of them before
we got religion and got divorced from ICOM.

The R100 (NOT PCR-100) was a nice mobile receiver also.

ICOM carries all receivers in its amateur line, not the commercial
line, so that tells you something about their own perception of the
product.

The R7100 also had a noisy IF, full of spurs. Other problems. We
documented them, ICOM engineers kept promising a fix, and finally gave
up and discontinued the thing from production relatively early in its
life cycle to avoid the hassles. There was a gap while the R8500 was
being designed, and it was and remains a friendly little receiver.

For hobby use I'd go with an R7000 which are inexpensive anymore, or
an 8500. Don't touch the 7100 or the 9000. We no longer will service
either of the latter, and never enjoyed servicing them when we were an
ICOM servicing dealer.

For professional use, consider a professional receiver, used if
necessary. W-J/CEI, Rhode & Swartz, Harris, Microtel, Cubic or one of
them. A completely different experience.

Steve


************************************************** *******************
Steve Uhrig, SWS Security, Maryland (USA)
Mfrs of electronic surveillance equip
website http://www.swssec.com
tel +1+410-879-4035, fax +1+410-836-1190
"In God we trust, all others we monitor"
************************************************** *******************




I've had two, no problems at all, running 24/7 for several years. They
were a nice reciever. I bought both of them used, one from a friend, and
one from a guy in this group. Neither had been touched, and both were
over 2 years old. They do run hot on 110, but on 12 volts they are nice
and cool. I only got rid of them because I needed cash to buy a new PC.

One of them was bought by a friend and it's still chugging along, no
problems whatsoever. It's got to be 11-12 years old.

7000's are decent, but there are caps that need to be replaced on a lot
of them and some of them are 17 years old, and getting creaky, solder
joint and display wise.



BDK