The ID-52 is an awesome radio. I've had mine for almost a week and am really enjoying it. However, if you are not interested in operating D Star, there are alternatives that are much more economical. It really shouldn't be judged too harshly on its price as it is the only D Star HT in production today and as such is a unique product.
You should have bought the Kenwood D-74 H.T. the tribander with D-star GPS -APRS & yes Satellite ! all mode receiver ! I love mine ! did I leave out anything ? Hi Hi 73 Phil..
I am a big Icom fan (9600 7300 7100 5100 705 51) I even put a deposit on a 52 about a year ago, but did not follow thru. The ID 51 has a bunch of features that the chinesium radios do not, however all of my baofeng and tyt radios out perform the ID-51 in FM transmit/receive. I will also mention that I basically do not use any of those features because my HT talks solely to the same few fm repeaters for its entire life. (Like most other HTs) HT needs in order... 1. TX/RX (Must talk and hear) 2. Cost (you must be able to concentrate on the HT's use and not its safety) 3. Small and light to carry 4. Antenna that is not unwieldy . A used 51 scores higher on this scale than a new 52 A $25 baofeng beats them both.
I haven't used the 51 or 52, but I have used a Yaesu VX-7, Yaesu FT-60, Icom IC-V8, Kenwood TH-D74, and a Baofeng (whatever the basic model is, I forget). All of the Japanese radios outperform the Baofeng for simplex use (out to nearly 100 miles), which my primary use case for 2mFM. As for point 2, that worry goes away once you get a mark or two on the case. I'm a *little* more protective of my TH-D74, but that's because there are no other radios available with its feature-set (features I use, btw), so if I did break it, I'd have to spend scalper money on a replacement (found a good deal on mine). That means I don't take it mountain biking, but I still take it camping, hiking, etc. It has become my default SOTA HT. Chris
My test is simple, My Chinese radios can use the local repeaters from my basement and the ID51 can not. The repeater is about 15 miles away. I think my use scenario would be much more common, but cheers to your 100 miles on a ht. That is truly unbelievable. (I mean that)
With a tower, really any tower nearby including but not limited to an UHF TV broadcast that seems to be too far from our frequencies a Chinese radio becomes damn deaf due its 'negative' dynamic range. In a basement, in some quiet rural area, or even better somewhere offshore a Chinese radio shows phenomenally high sensitivity and easily outperforms most HTs made by reputable brands. In a town Baofeng is just useless piece of junk as it shuts up with no obvious signs of overloading. Superhet will show you intermods when hugely overloaded; Baoeng won't. Baofeng will pretend there is no any signal on the frequency while in fact the signal is present and is petty strong to be received by a superhet. Sure in a basement your HT does not overload so you benefit from really high sensitivity while don't suffer from any other Chinese HT's concern. So while no doubt you're saying the truth your experience cannot be directly extrapolated.
Nope. I didn't say your cheap beer is no good; I only said it tastes really good if only chilled well.
Nice video. I bought the ID-52A. I also bought the Heil HTH-I headset for it and it works great with the inline PTT switch, but I can'tget it to work with VOX. Do you know if the VOX feature only works with the ICOM headsets? Or do you think I'm doing something wrong? Thanks! 73, Wayne - W7WGC
60 miles from a 3400' summit in VA to another ham in PA today using the TH-D74 and a half-wave whip on the radio. Full quieting in both directions too. This summit is populated by a number of communications towers, including something that put out a bursted transmission every 30 seconds or so, so not an HT-friendly environment (too lazy to set up the HF gear). Chris
QSO report from my ID51 at the top of Mt Mitchell @ 6684' from a station 92 miles away. It still cant hit the W4CQ repeater (444.450) from my basement, whereas my TYT and Baofeng can.
There seems to be a lot of sample variability with the Chinese radios, but the three Baofengs I have had direct experience with all had performance issues. With the one I owned myself, I could sit in my driveway with it and my Yaesu listening to a regional repeater. My Yaesu would be crystal clear, but the Baofeng's audio was scratchy as if it were barely picking up the repeater. The other two, belonging to hunting buddies (also hams), would exhibit random noise bursts down in a valley in the middle of the national forest even with squelch adjusted to a reasonable level. Standing right next to them, my Yaesu and my other buddy's Icom were silent while theirs made noise on regular intervals as if there was a transmitter nearby. While out in the woods at varying distances apart, comms with the Baofeng-equipped guys was spotty and difficult to copy in both directions but just fine between myself and the guy with the Icom (IC-V8 FWIW). That said, the Icom-equipped guy also has a Wouxon HT (2m/220) which works great and goes out on SOTA and VHF contest trips when he wants to do 220mhz. The only thing that comes to mind regarding your basement issue is maybe the Icom's antenna isn't as well matched on 70cm as it is on 2m? It really sounds like an ERP issue on 70cm. Otherwise it obviously works great given the performance in the video. Chris
Got an ID-52 and glad I did. Have had ID-31s and ID-51s...this one has better rx/tx audio than prior Icoms. Compares to my Kenwood TH-D74 favorably. Now if we could just get ICOM to correct the DV tx audio in the 705s, 7100s and 9700s..........!!!!!!!! PLEASE PLEASE THEY SOUND HORRIBLE
ICOM doesn't have true APRS....It's "DPRS". Believe me I know the difference. APRS is much better. See www.qrz.com/db/kk4one But , I could get you started with actual APRS if you'd like. Chris Day, AD4ZU
