ICOM IC-208H

The reason my wife ended up with this radio.

"At approximately 8.00am this morning, a fiber optic cable was broken on the Gold Coast which affected services in Queensland.

The following services are impacted for Optus customers: fixed line voice calls to and from Queensland, mobile services for customers located in Queensland, internet browsing for Queensland customers to servers outside Queensland.

"Technicians are on site and repair options are currently being assessed.

"Services are expected to be restored by midday [AEST]."
_{Source ABC News}

This was the first of several outages the carrier experienced during July and August 2008, and each time the network went down, thousands of people were affected.

Now you would think this would be a disaster wouldn’t you?

Well, it was, and it wasn’t.

It was a disaster because lots of people could not communicate for several hours. On the other hand it wasn't because it highlighted the benefits of amateur radio to my wife. See, I have been trying to get my wife to get an amateur radio licence for years, but she always declined, stating that it did not interest her. Fair enough.

However, after the second network failure in a few weeks, my wife became frustrated that she could not get me on my mobile phone to pass an important message regarding one of my children.

It frustrated her even more when she could hear me chatting on the Mt Cotton repeater while on the way home from work, she often listened in on the IC-706 MKII G and was well known to many of the regulars who often said hello. The problem there was that she was unlicensed and was not allowed to give me a call. Strike one up for amateur radio.

Guess what my wife was reading the next day when I got home from work? You guessed it, the Foundation Licence Manual published by the Wireless Institute of Australia.

Why I chose this radio.

Within a month, all of the assessments were completed, and the licence and Certificate of Proficiency issued. At that point, I started looking around for a radio for “her” car. I finally settled on an Icom IC-208H because of what I had heard about them from friends, and read about them on eHam. But what swayed me in the end was:

• Removable head with a decent length separation cable supplied.
• If the microphone cable is too short, you can just use an off the shelf CAT5 computer network cable, and if you want to retain the curly cord just use a CAT5 RJ45 joiner.
• All controls for the radio are on the microphone, which makes it nice and easy while you are driving.
• The radio can be programmed through the extension speaker socket with a laptop computer and the programming software.

Now, this last point is very important, as to try and program the radio through the front panel is a messy, time consuming process. If you have got, or can get someone who has got, the programming software from Icom then this is the way to go.

If you need a starting point for programming the IC-208H, then have a look at the *.icf file in the right menu of this page. Note that this file is set up for the Brisbane area and some Sydney repeaters. There are a few emergency services included, and also the UHF CB band. Oh, and before you ask: No I do not have the programming software available for download; it is, however, available from Icom for a small fee.

Programming Interface.

The schematic diagram for the IPC-478(U) programming interface is available from various locations on the internet; Google is your friend. Just a word on this. If you find a CI-V programming interface for an Icom IC-706 MKII G then you can use this as well. You just need to swap the tip and middle ring wires to get it to work, either via a switch, which is what I have done, or using a stereo to mono converter plug. Works a treat.

The task of installation.

The biggest prerequisite that my wife had was that there were to be no holes. Obviously there are a few holes, but you would have to be a contortionist to see them.

The body of the radio is mounted under the rear parcel shelf (two holes), with all of the wiring routed under the rear seat and along the passenger side sill panel.

The separation cable, CAT5 microphone extension and extension speaker wires emerge from the bottom of the centre pillar and pass under the passenger seat. The separation cable is hidden under the side of the centre console and comes out just under the AM/FM radio where the head unit is stuck on with double sided tape. There is a hole in the din tray under the AM/FM radio so the separation cable can come through, but the hole is in a donor tray that I got from the wreckers. I kept the original for when we go to sell the car.

The CAT5 cable for the microphone is also hidden under the centre console, and an RJ45 joiner is used to add the curly cord from the microphone. I tried using the microphone with just the CAT5 cable but found it too stiff and it just kept getting in the way. The joiner did the trick.

The extension speaker is secured to the floor with Velcro under the passenger seat. With modern cars and air conditioning this is plenty loud enough to hear even with three kids arguing in the back seat.

The negative of the radio is grounded under the rear parcel shelf and the positive follows the same route as the other cables, except it continues on to the firewall via the front passenger side sill and kick panel, and is connected directly to the battery via a fuse.

This was a mission in itself, as I had to remove the front passenger side wheel and inner wheel arch cowling so that I could get to the wiring loom. As it was, the loom was a mess of wires and I could not get the wire to go through the limited space. I ended up drilling a small hole through the fire wall and threaded it through there with a grommet (hole number three).

The antenna.

I could have used one of the fender bolts to mount an antenna with a bit of gain, but instead I decided to give an on glass antenna a try. These types of antennas are used often with in car mobile phone kits and work well in that situation, so I reasoned that it should work OK with 2m and 70cm.

I found that the tuning for the on glass antenna was very close to spot on. There is provision for adjusting the state of tune using a small plastic tool if needed. Adjustment can be made via a small tuning coil located in the 60mm square box which mounts to the inside of the vehicle windscreen.

When mounting the antenna, make sure that the surface is clean and free of grease and oil, I used some mentholated spirits to clean the glass. Make sure that you are happy with where you are going to stick the antenna as the tape that is supplied, sticks lick mud to a blanket, and will not work a second time if you make a mistake and take it off.

The antenna comes with a small ¼ wave stub which has to be clipped on to the metal part of the coax connector. This does not look very sturdy but in actual fact is quite secure.

The one thing you need to watch with the mounting of these antennas is that if you have after market window tinting which is metalized, this will upset the performance of the antenna. You will either need to find another location for the antenna or trim out some of the metalized film. OEM glass does not have the same problems, even the OEM windscreens with the 10% tinting are OK.

So how does it perform?

Very well indeed:

• The installation is tidy and unobtrusive.
• With 15 watts I can get most repeaters in Brisbane and simplex range, mobile to base, is quite respectable.
• I use a Simoco PRM8030 commercial radio converted to 2m in “my” car, and suffers some pager interference when passing the Story Bridge in the city; the IC-208H is no different. Anyone who expects a wide band radio such as the Icom IC-208H to have no bleed through is asking a lot. If you don't want bleed through then don't buy a wide band receive radio.
• One thing I have noticed, is that some cabs and Brisbane busses can have some bleed through when sitting at a set of lights on my PRM80 but the Icom does not seem to have the same problem. The bleed through comes form their GPS tracking installed in the cabs and busses.

Transmitted audio

One thing I did notice early on, was that the transmitted audio was a bit low, this is fine if you are listening with head phones or in a base situation, but if you are in a car, there is nothing worse that turning the volume up to hear a softer station (note not weaker) only to have a station with good audio blow you out of the cab of the car. The first thing I recommend anyone does is set the microphone audio to high. I have no idea why there is a low audio setting, perhaps for packet(?) but really it should not be used.

Operation

The biggest plus this radio has, is having all of the controls in the microphone. It means that you do not have to fumble around on the head unit and take your eyes off the road. Not that you would do that anyway as it is illegal in some states ;-)

Everything is there, volume control, squelch, scanning functions. Everything, right down to the tone dialing for IRLP nodes. The on off switch is on the head unit though, which probably is not such a bad thing, that way you can not inadvertently switch the radio off during a chat.

There is a PTT lock function which allows a sort of hands free thing. I don’t know if I would use this personally, but it’s a nice touch.

Conclusion

Well that’s my take on the IC-208H, not extensive I know, but I hope it helps you decide if you want to own one or not. Or at the very least, this article has given you some ideas on installing a radio in your modern plastic car ;-)

BCNU

Files

User Manual
Service Manual
vk4.icf File