My brother sent me an Icom F3S handheld, nice radio if I can get it
reprogrammed. I built a cloning cable and found a cloning program for
the Icom F3, but it doesnt seem to work with the F3S. Does anyone have
the cloning program? I would even be willing to send the radio to you
to have it programmed and compensate for any time involved. Thanks for
your time and consideration on the matter.
Tim Mize N7XAU

On 8 Feb 2006 06:05:13 -0800, "TimBob" wrote:

My brother sent me an Icom F3S handheld, nice radio if I can get it
reprogrammed. I built a cloning cable and found a cloning program for
the Icom F3, but it doesnt seem to work with the F3S. Does anyone have
the cloning program? I would even be willing to send the radio to you
to have it programmed and compensate for any time involved. Thanks for
your time and consideration on the matter.
Tim Mize N7XAU


Tim,

The cloning cable has a RS-232 to TTL level converter, hope you built
one with the converter. The F3 / F3S will not connect directly to a
computer RS-232 port.

The cloning programs are the same. The F3S is a simpler radio, without
the DTMF keypad.

I don't have the F3 information at hand but you do need to place the
F# into cloning mode, usually by holding down a button while powering
up the radio.

When using the program you need to first READ the radio contents into
the program. Icom's have hidden data in the radio that you can't input
yourself.

Starting the cloning program and trying to reprogram the radio without
first reading the contents of the radio will cause cloning to
fail. The hidden data gets over written with empty numbers.

To fix that see if someone can send you an Icom .icf file for an
F3 / F3S. They are the same if the frequency coverage is the same.
Load up that .icf and clone the radio, now read the radio back into
the program and make your frequency changes. and clone the radio
again. Save the modified file as your .icf.

I hope some of this helps

Gary K8IZ

Hi Gary, yes I did build a level converter, found the schematic on the
net, it was a schematic directly from Icom for the programming cable. I
did try holding all the buttons while powering up, didnt notice any
difference in the display if it was in the cloning mode, I will try
again. Its good to know that the radio's and programs are the same.
Sounds like I just need to get the radio into cloning mode and then
read its contents. Thanks for your reply and insights, it helped alot!

73s
Tim N7XAU