ICOM M602 VHF Radio

[S T E V E]

Would like to hear your thougths about the ICOM M602 VHF radio!

 

[Larry W4CSC]

Would like to hear your thougths about the ICOM M602 VHF radio!

A beautiful, but overly-complex, way to waste a lot of money on something
you'll never need, is my take. My captain bought it because it matches the
M-802 HF SSB rig he bought me so we could use my ham radio license at sea.

You really never need to key in a channel, directly. Ours is mostly used
like a walkie talkie from the Icom "Commander" remote mic at the helm.

Next to the M-602 at our nav station, is an older M-59 which sold for $800
less money. It covers the SAME channels, with the same DSC capability,
with the SAME power output and the SAME modulation/range/coverage as the
M-602...and doesn't take up so much real estate on the panel. M-59 is the
backup VHF on a separate antenna system on the mizzen.

M-602 has some nice features we rarely use....foghorn, a deck hailer that
is also a listening device so sensitive you can hear the crew of the boat
you are coming up on in a race talking about what they want to do to you
and the world's most expensive boat horn. It's quite nicely sealed up
against the weather, unlike the totally stupid M-802 which is open to the
air with a fan that even sucks the sea air into itself for cooling.

If you want the Rolls Royce of VHF radios...buy it. If you're looking for
functionality, buy the little Icom VHF radios at much lower prices.....

 

[Larry W4CSC]

my experience with the M-59 was unpleasant. it was very susceptible to
intermod, especially from pager xmitters. i installed an M-127 and at
first thought there was a problem with the antenna - the intermod just
disappeared. another M-59 on the dock chirped and squawked with the
pager xmitter but the M-127 was immune.

I'm experiencing no intermod because there is a single Decibel Products
cavity with two coupling loops in it in the antenna of each VHF radio, both
isolating the radio from out-of-band signals and providing direct-to-ground
lightning protection because the radio is no longer hooked to the antenna,
it's hooked to a coupling loop DC short inside the grounded cavity. The
cavity is simply tuned for max output power around halfway between 16 and
72 which passes both ends of the band adequately for recreational use. 25
watts in gives me 22 watts out on Ch 16, where it matters, and range to the
horizon doesn't suffer at all.

It would be nice if they'd put in a better front end to all the radios, but
they won't.

i'd love to put M-127s in my new boat, but they are not being made
new these days, and the M-602 has a dedicated DSC channel-70 receiver
which the M-127 did not have (and certainly not the M-59).

i'm going with the M-602 - i just hope the RX section is as good as the
M-127 it displaced in the product line.

Lionheart has the M-602, which is silly but my captain liked the way it
looked next tot he M-802. M-502 is hundreds less money. You don't really
use direct keypad channel entry much..(c; Our M-602 panel buttons are
hardly ever touched...unless I'm listening to the talk on the boat we're
passing in a race to find out what they're trying to do to us. For radio,
the remote "Commander" mic turns the M-602 into an M-59 with simple
controls.

By the way, you MUST turn the M-602 on PRIOR to turning the remote
Commander mic on because the M-602 ignores the remote commands if it wasn't
booted up before the Commander started talking to it. The Commander will
come on and simply be ignored if it boots first. It's a bug, not a
feature.