"dxAce" wrote in message
...
Some may find this to be of interest:

Icom radios will cost more now, and their still junk.
Look inside an Icom and it looks like the inside of
a Chinese-made $39.95 Radio Shack DVD player.

...and let's not forget the great Icom fiasco of some years ago
(1980's) when Icom deliberately made microprocessor controlled radios
for both ham and swl which had their internal CPU operating system
written into volatile DRAM as a cost cutting measure. (!)

Your radio's lithium cell aged and went bad or
got bumped lose in the mobile and your radio
then promptly D I E D. You could have it "repaired"
of course by sending it off to Icom with a check
for $65.00 to have it "re-programmed".

In ham radio circles this became know as
the "Icom Time Bomb Rig", and their sales of
course promptly dropped thru the floor faster than
a lead-filled baloon falling into a interstellar black hole.

They may have fixed this gaffe long ago, but Icom
still builds radios much like Pakesheesh Patel's family,
what owns the Subway Sandwich shop, builds their
hoagies....slapped together with no condiments (extra
charge, much like Icom accessories) and dry.

Buy a Yaesu instead.
A much more advanced radio all around.