Over heating and sudden shut off - New Radio/New Operator

[KJ6ROV]

Hey All!

I am looking for answers what might have happened to my new radio this evening. I was enjoying back and forth conversation on my way home, and my radio suddenly felt really warm, and then suddenly shut off. It would not go back on until I got him and plunged in the car charger when the radio suddenly came back on returning to the same frequency I was last on.

Battery was not the cause.

Radio is an ICOM IC-92AD D-Star Model.
I was running Mid power 2.5 Watts
Connected to Papa System on 440
I was actively transmitting and receiving back and forth for about 45 minutes or less. I try not to transmit for more than 1 minute at a time, then pause and let others respond.....

Any help or suggestions are very appreciated:)

1st post, more to come I am sure!

KJ6ROV - Eric

[K0BG]

I'm not surprised. I can't speak for the IC-92AD, but my Icom V8 get warm after about 5 minutes of transmit. It will shut itself off after about 8 or 10 minutes. You can't expect too much out of such a small package.

[KE5MC]

Eric,

92 does have a history for getting warm. Running at 2.5 watts helps some. It could be your battery voltage was low. If I understand your post it came back on when you plug in the charger. If it is a new battery a couple of charge/discharge cycles will improve the capacity. Check and see if there is a way to display battery voltage on the screen. I think there is but I don't remember.

Mike

[WD3D]

The bottom line is - you probably need to join a real ham radio club and get real advice from knowledgeable hams.
If you had a Elmer when you bought your radio, a real Elmer would have told you that a hand held is not designed to be used as a substitute for a real radio.
Handheld radios have their place in this world, they are great for doing public service events or for doing work at your local club, between two hams Line Of Sight, but are lousy when it comes to being a primary source for communications.

Unfortunately - people are stupid.
They have a cell phone and they figure they don't want to spend a whole lot of money to get on the air and they figure that a hand held is just as good as a mobile radio, and so they spend their hard earned money on a hand held and expect it to do the same thing as a base station or mobile radio.

If you took your radio apart, you would see that everything inside of it is surface mount technology. All of the components inside of the radio is almost microscopic. There is no heat sink, because heat sinks tends to be heavy - which add's weight to the radio.

Anytime you have a Transistor, you must have some type of heat sink to protect it and a Thermistor to cut back the power or shut off the radio to protect it in case of it over heating so it doesn't burn itself up.

A Handheld radio is built on the principal of 90 / 10.
That is 90% listen time and 10% transmit.
With a 90 / 10 cycle, you could expect your battery life to be about 8 - 12 hours and the lifespan of your radio to be about 10 years.

When you go to a 50 / 50 cycle, the battery life is decreased to about 1 hour, maybe two hours of time before the battery is dead and the radio is red hot.

Manufacturers are not going to tell you this, because they are in business to sell radios and if people are stupid and doesn't understand how their radios works - all they care about is making the sale, not explaining how it works.

If the radio lives beyond the one year warranty, great!
If the radio expires before that time span, they might repair it one time and might warn you that abuse is not covered under the warranty and that when you use it too much - beyond the recommended 90 / 10 - that it is abuse.

My only advice is to purchase a good mobile radio and antenna and put it in the vehicle you wish to use it in and save your handheld for other applications and use this as a expensive lesson in how communications works.

Basically - you don't get something for nothing and you can't use amateur radio equipment the same way as a cell phone and expect it to work the same way as a cell phone.
Cell phones are probably down into the range of about 500 mw of power and the towers in most cases are less then 10 miles apart, with most cell towers located directly in the areas of the most use - towns and cities, with limited coverage everywhere else. A cell phone battery might last two hours on one charge in constant use, but cell phones are cheap and has a limited life span. Most people do not keep their cell phones more then a couple of years anymore and most used cell phones aren't even worth the price of shipping once a newer model comes out - hence if it is not 4G - you can't even give them away anymore.

Amateur radios on the other hand are sometimes used for generations with a very limited amount of maintenance and upkeep.

[K7JBQ]

NK,

Although you gave lots of good advice. However, referring to new operators as "stupid" is not terribly helpful. In fact, it gives a bad name to amateur radio in general and QRZ.com in particular.

I'm not going to cite you for this, or give infraction points -- this time. But please refrain from this practice in the future.

73,
Bill, K7JBQ
One of the QRZ.com moderators