I bought an Icom R1 scanner from Grove Enterprises. After using it for about a week I returned it for a full refund. Below is a review by Michael Martin from the Scan Atlanta Bulletin Board (404-763-4369). His comments pretty much sum up what I thought about the radio. ========================================================================= ICOM R1 After many weeks of playing around with my newest toy, the ICOM R1, I've decided to give it a review that will help others who are interested in purchasing this radio. The radio arrived in a box containing the basic radio, a VHF/UHF wideband antenna, belt clip (which you have to screw on yourself), earphone, battery charger and instruction manual. The first thing you must do is put the radio on charge and let it sit there for approximately 15 hours (as this is what the manual suggest to get a full charge). During this charging period is a good time to sit down (find yourself a comfortable chair or couch) and start the LONG process of reading the manual. At first, I figured you had to have a PhD from MIT to understand half of the functions this radio could do, but after a while, some of it made sense. Once you have fully charged the internal batteries (which are virtually nonaccessable) you are ready to start operation this scanner. There are three separate knobs on the top. The power/on/off is in the center and the squelch is on the left. The location of the squelch knob and the positioning of the BNC connector for the antenna are so close together it makes it difficult for anyone with large hands to operate this knob. You turn on the radio and it will come up on Memory channel number 0 (yes, channel zero). The radio goes from 0-99. Now comes the hard part. In order for you to program a frequency, you must first move it to the "clear" format before you can enter it. This is accomplished by depressing the Function key on the left side of the radio while pushing the "CL" key simultaneously. Once in the clear mode, you enter your frequency, what mode you want (am, fm or wfm) and then ENTER. Now you must again depress the function key and then the "mr" key to get it to accept it. After awhile, you will get use to this procedure, if not, you will have a whole lot of blank channels to choose from. To get the scanner to scan is another MIT graduate procedure. This radio does NOT have "banks" to it. You have to select what channel span you wish to scan. This means if you want to scan channels 0 thru 15, you have to go into a setup mode and enter the upper and lower channel limits. YOU CANNOT SCAN DIFFERENT LIMITS OF CHANNELS SUCH AS 0-15, 25-30 AND 90-99. If there are frequencies in those other channel limits you wish to scan, you will have to move them to channels in a continuous run with your base limit. If there is a channel within your bank that you do not wish to listen to, you cannot simply hit the lockout key to get rid of it as this radio does not have one. Instead you have a "mask" button which will completely remove that frequency from your radio! Once you have gotten your radio set up to scan which ever channels you want, you look for the normal scan button, but there isn't one. Again you have to go to the function mode and then depress the P Scan key. You can set up the radio with either a 2 or 10 second delay (not individual channels, but for the whole spectrum. Now most radios when you lock up on a frequency, you simply hit the scan button again and it continues. Not here. The third know on top of the radio is you resume scan button. Turn it clock wise, and it scans in a ascending order (0-15). Turn it counter clockwise, and it scans in a decending order (15-0). As with the Radio Shack Pro 2004-2006 scanners, you have the ability to have 10 different memory scan banks. These are accessed by getting out of the "MR" mode and into the clear mode. Here, again, by using the function mode, you can operate each of these banks. This radio has the ability to scan in increment of 0.5, 5, 8, 10, 12.5, 15, 20, 25, 30 or 50 kHz steps, both manually and in scan mode. You can also change the frequency by 1, 10, 100 or 1000 mHz by selecting the Dial Set mode. There are many other "options" that can be found on this radio that are only found on the top of the line Mercedes. The radio has a built in clock (either 12 or 24 hour), a power saver mode (which will actually shut the radio down after a while), a timer which you can set to turn off the radio like a time on the TV, a receive light that comes on when there is a signal being received (but can be deactivated to save battery power) and it even has a built in "S" meter. Also, there is a nice light that lets you see your frequency at night or in the dark. Performance: The R1 starts at 100 kHz and goes all the way to 1300 mHz. It will only receive signals in AM, FM or NFM. There is no CW or Side Band selectivity. If you wish to monitor any signal below 30 mHz, you must use an antenna other than the one supplied. I actually work within 1 mile of the WSB-AM 750 transmitter and when I tune in their frequency, I can barely hear it. The supplied antenna does, though, work rather well on 30-500 mHz. Performance decreases severely on anything over 500 mHz. The internal batteries are good for about 5-6 hours of monitoring, 3-4 if continuous carrier. Adjacent signal and birdies are horrible. The birdies seem to pop up where you would least expect them. The VHF Hi band is full of them and the UHF has it's fair share. When you get into the 800 band, especially around the cellular frequencies (of course I would not monitor that as it is a violation of Federal law), you can start to pick up a signal as far away as 300 kHz! Recommendations: Over all, the R1 is not that bad of a radio (as long as you have your degree in physics), but I cannot give it a bad grade as I haven't been able to compare it to the AR1000. There are many features I would like to see incorporated into this unit as well as many features I would like to see deleted from it. A simple lockout key, bank selections and easier instructions. ICOM would do good to get rid of the MULTIPLE functions it takes to operate this radio. Necessary Accessories: Depending on your listening habits, if you stick to one particular band, get an antenna for that frequency range. A good quality carrying case instead of the flimsy light weight leather case you can order. AN EXTERNAL BATTERY PACK IS A MUST! Opt for the ICOM BP 83, 84, or 85. The internal batteries are rated at 300 ma. The BP 83 is 600 ma, the 84 is 750 ma and the 85 is 1000 ma. When you purchase the battery pack, you MUST get a new charge with it. The supplied charger is rated at ONLY 50 ma and WILL NOT charge an external pack. You can purchase a 500 ma charge at Radio Shack for as little as $10.94 (RS part 273-1652), but the only draw back is that the ICOM radio uses a sub miniature type plug and the Radio Shack charge has a miniature only (I solved this problem by cutting off the plug off the ICOM charger and splicing it on to the RS charger). This will save you alot of bucks as I believe the 300 ma charger from ICOM runs about $35.00. Conclusions: Would I buy this radio again if I had to do it all over again? I really don't know. As I said earlier, I have never had the opportunity to compare it with the AR1000, but would like to. This radio is not for the weak at heart. There are many good points to it as is an equal amount of bad. Be prepared to study the manual inside and out as well as many hours of frustration trying to figure it out. ICOM could have done a better job of this radio, and who know, maybe they will introduce a R2 one day that is better. -- ============================================================================= Gordon Edwards, N4VPH | "Nothing Unreal Exists" NCR Engineering & Manufacturing | gedwards@ncratl.atlantaga.ncr.com | Kiri-Kin-Tha's First Law of Metaphysics