Nice review. I have both the R8600 and the R9500. I think the 8600 performance compares quite well considering the 9500 costs 5 times as much. I just wish my 9500 had the waterfall in all modes, not just in FSK decoding mode. BTW if you just tap the MW button it pops up a menu that lets you pick an unused memory to write to.
Dear Scotty, you're quite right :). We found that option as we continued to play with the receiver. The 'concept' and I use that term loosely, was to 'capture' the experience a Ham has when first using such a receiver. We've produced a series of 'bite sized' videos to go along with this one, covering aspects such as the one you mentioned. PS. Do you have any other tips on what we should cover? 73, Jarrad
I believe its at latest - 1.20 - but I'll have to check. Firmware update videos are always worthwhile. Feel free to post the link to your IC-R8600 video here and I'll approve the comment Scott :)
the 9500 is already a receiver of the past.. just check how uneasy it is to program through a computer and to manage the 1000 memories / groups etc and to record the sound simply ...
Great video, thanks for posting. I have been really impressed with the receive performance of the IC-R6800. It is You Tube videos like yours, that helped me make my mind up to get one, and I'm glad I did. I have been in the Ham hobby since I was 15 way back to the 70s, and have tried out many HF receivers over the years. So I have become accustomed to what a great receiver actually sounds like, from the old boat anchor analogue tube designs and solid state, right up to present modern SDR receivers. So this receiver ticks all the boxes in that respect and much more, it is a nice solidly built SDR receiver, with excellent audio via an external speaker and excellent SDR bandwidth filtering. I have tried out much larger SDR transceivers on the receive side which are really good, but this receiver really shines in that respect. I have added an external S meter taken from an old Yaesu FR50B receiver, which looks great sitting on the top. Watching an incoming CW signal on fast AGC, the S meter needle flicks delightfully!
The IC-R8600 is one of the best wideband SDR receivers I have used, it has excellent filters for both SSB and CW. Listening to CW on narrow bandwidths such as 350Hz - 250Hz results in clear very easy to read CW.
Hi Jarred. Nice review. The radio receiver IC-R8600 can work with the HDSDR program through the library ExtIO_ICR8600.dll. We will be interested to see a video report about this work. Regards. Yuri UA3VBD
Dear David, you're most welcome thanks for the kind words and sorry for the late reply; I've had teeth issues and my eldest son is having trouble going to school. 73, Jarrad VK3BL
Looks very nice... I have IC 7300 and looks for me - they keep almost the same operation methodes at IC R8600. It's true it's very easy to operate - like smartphone. Ive never used User Manual for IC7300 even I own it 4 years. The only one big problem for me in terms of IC8600 is... Price 😢
Most already have decent HF receivers, so that leaves the VHF and UHF bands. However, their pretty much useless without decoding. The SDS100 decodes all when the modes are activated. I don't see the reason for a receiver to go to 3 Ghz without being able to decode everything, considering the price.
The portable ICOM receivers usually have the concept of both preset bands and individual frequency memories, arranged into banks, so you can get things set up for navigating quickly between bands AND scan through memorized channels / save and recall them too. At least this is the way it worked with RC6 and RC20. Odd to hear RC8600 doesn’t work that way.
Hi Jarad, Thank you for a nice review. I wondered if you had thought of connecting the R8600 and one of your other Icom's via the remote jacks and trying them as Twins? You would have full duplex and full break-in on CW.
I must admit I haven't - I'm a little ignorant as to how the remote function works; thanks for letting me know about something I should look into! 73, Jarrad VK3BL :)
Cool receiver, but I got to ask, who would pay $2,000 plus for just a receiver like this, when they can get a full fledge icom ham radio transceiver with similar features for the same if not less money? Are the GHZ frequencies really that desirable to pick up? Maybe I'm missing something/
Very nice demonstration. Thanks for showing the scanning performance. Very fast and very useful as a scanner, even it has spectrum scope. I heard, that ICom going to release handheld communication receiver IC-R30. which may be affordable to som of us. :) Thank you for the walkthrough demonstration. Bahahtir, 9W2GNU,.. 73.
Dear Bahahtir; you're welcome. Please accept my apologies for the random audio 'clicks' throughout the video; it seems my mixer's USB interface had some buffering issues whilst plugged into my recording device. I've since discovered a work around :) I've already recorded some more IC-R8600 content in the future, and will be releasing it shortly. It is free of this issue - the solution was to directly pair my wifi camera with my iPad during recording. Modern technology, always something to go wrong :) 73, Jarrad
Dear Bahathir :) Yes, I have found Hams to be most accommodating of small mistakes such as these :). But like our Ham station, we are committed to continual improvement hihi! Despite many attempts, I could not get the audio to stream properly to my camera. In future, I will be syncing an externally recorded track using iMovie so that none of these issues occur. PS, what IC-R30 rumours have your heard? It sounds interesting! 73, Jarrad
Rate My Radio QSL. Actually, I come to amateur radio from audio hobby, for many years. :) Yes, USB has latency and sometime buffering due to complex system for general purpose. So, a dedicated audio recorder is a great tool for high quality production. THere are several companies making professional audio gears, such as Sony, TASCAM, FOSTEX, .., with several options to choose. We can get a dedicated audio recorder such as Sony PCM D100, or mixer with built-in digital recorder. or very complex system such as TriCaster. Hope it gives some insight and have a nice day. Thank you.
Rate My Radio Dear Sir, Re: Icom IC-R30. You can search Icom IC-R30 in YouTUbe, and several clips are from Tokyo Hamfest. ua-cam.com/video/ZpYhIQSIyBA/v-deo.html BTW, there is also other manufacturers for scanners too. THis handheld scanner can decode several digital modes including DMR. AOR AR-DV10 ua-cam.com/video/sGHFJaVeS9c/v-deo.html Thank you.
I have bought an icom r8600,could you help me i have read the instructions over and over again to get the waterfall on the screen,instructions say you can turn the waterfall on and off,but it does not tell me how to turn it on and off,could you help thanks steve.
I believe the 8600 (same as the 7300) uses a different DSP to the 7610. Personally the 7610 is slightly better for me but I run a Yaesu SP-2000 external speaker. 73, Jarrad VK3BL :)
Dear Rich, It is tiny; a little bit smaller than the IC-7300. The receiver is better according to sherwood numbers, and it doesn't have the 200Hz high pass the 7300 is known for. All in all its impressive, and I can only assume the small stature is to aid with vehicle mounting; I certainly would prefer more 'box & knobs' for that level of money. The response re: my IC-7610 was not conclusive unfortunately, however I was offered a replacement unit which I accepted; so far so good :) 73, Jarrad
Its part joke, and part test Mark; Apple (under Steve Jobs) introduced us to the concept that intuitive usability is the a hallmark of good design. The IC-R8600 passes with flying colours; you can have a lot of enjoyment with it without having to study the manual in depth nightly if you are remotely familiar with the Icom Interface paradigm :)
My formal education is in Sociology, and Philosophy. So one of my interests is how well 'man' and 'machine' meld; in other words, how simple things are to use. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Its the 'product design' embodiment of Occam's Razor. Of course, I could just be using fancy words to justify laziness; we'll never know :). But I assure you all the good features will be covered in depth in seperate videos :) 73, Jarrad
Thanks for the video. My only critique is that It sounds like you have some sort of noise reduction activated on your voice and for someone like me listening through large speakers with bass response it doesn't sound good at all. Your voice sounds like it is constantly on the verge of being cut off. Nothing major I guess but it doesn't make the video enjoyable to watch because all I can concentrate on is your voice being c choppy and making popping noises. Again other than that thanks for the vid.
Dear Dark. Unfortunately its a valid critique and a function of a poor microphone and soft palate aka teeth issues. We’ve got better equipment now and I’ve invested a few thousand this year getting my teeth restored - I suffer from continual grinding aka Bruxism. 73, Jarrad VK3BL :)
Nice review. I have both the R8600 and the R9500. I think the 8600 performance compares quite well considering the 9500 costs 5 times as much. I just wish my 9500 had the waterfall in all modes, not just in FSK decoding mode. BTW if you just tap the MW button it pops up a menu that lets you pick an unused memory to write to.
Dear Scotty, you're quite right :).
We found that option as we continued to play with the receiver. The 'concept' and I use that term loosely, was to 'capture' the experience a Ham has when first using such a receiver. We've produced a series of 'bite sized' videos to go along with this one, covering aspects such as the one you mentioned.
PS. Do you have any other tips on what we should cover?
73, Jarrad
I've done 2 firmware update vids for my radio. You might want to do one for your viewers and your own enjoyment...
I believe its at latest - 1.20 - but I'll have to check. Firmware update videos are always worthwhile. Feel free to post the link to your IC-R8600 video here and I'll approve the comment Scott :)
Thanks, Jarrad! Here is the link to my last firmware update: ua-cam.com/users/edit?o=U&video_id=3_LEZzHrTSw
the 9500 is already a receiver of the past.. just check how uneasy it is to program through a computer and to manage the 1000 memories / groups etc and to record the sound simply ...
Great video, thanks for posting. I have been really impressed with the receive performance of the IC-R6800. It is You Tube videos like yours, that helped me make my mind up to get one, and I'm glad I did. I have been in the Ham hobby since I was 15 way back to the 70s, and have tried out many HF receivers over the years. So I have become accustomed to what a great receiver actually sounds like, from the old boat anchor analogue tube designs and solid state, right up to present modern SDR receivers. So this receiver ticks all the boxes in that respect and much more, it is a nice solidly built SDR receiver, with excellent audio via an external speaker and excellent SDR bandwidth filtering. I have tried out much larger SDR transceivers on the receive side which are really good, but this receiver really shines in that respect. I have added an external S meter taken from an old Yaesu FR50B receiver, which looks great sitting on the top. Watching an incoming CW signal on fast AGC, the S meter needle flicks delightfully!
The IC-R8600 is one of the best wideband SDR receivers I have used, it has excellent filters for both SSB and CW. Listening to CW on narrow bandwidths such as 350Hz - 250Hz results in clear very easy to read CW.
Hi Jarred. Nice review.
The radio receiver IC-R8600 can work with the HDSDR program through the library ExtIO_ICR8600.dll.
We will be interested to see a video report about this work.
Regards. Yuri UA3VBD
Excellent demonstration. Thank you. Antenna selection does not seem to hold for the above 30MHz range; am I missing something? Thank you.
Very helpful review. Thank you for your efforts on this.
Dear David, you're most welcome thanks for the kind words and sorry for the late reply; I've had teeth issues and my eldest son is having trouble going to school. 73, Jarrad VK3BL
Looks very nice... I have IC 7300 and looks for me - they keep almost the same operation methodes at IC R8600. It's true it's very easy to operate - like smartphone. Ive never used User Manual for IC7300 even I own it 4 years. The only one big problem for me in terms of IC8600 is... Price 😢
Buenos días jarred, quisiera saber si el 8600 sirve para grabar el espectro y cuantos MHZ. Gracias
Nice receiver but no DMR support. This is the 21st Century Icom - wake up! DMR is being used everywhere.
Most already have decent HF receivers, so that leaves the VHF and UHF bands. However, their pretty much useless without decoding. The SDS100 decodes all when the modes are activated. I don't see the reason for a receiver to go to 3 Ghz without being able to decode everything, considering the price.
The portable ICOM receivers usually have the concept of both preset bands and individual frequency memories, arranged into banks, so you can get things set up for navigating quickly between bands AND scan through memorized channels / save and recall them too. At least this is the way it worked with RC6 and RC20. Odd to hear RC8600 doesn’t work that way.
Hi Jarad, Thank you for a nice review. I wondered if you had thought of connecting the R8600 and one of your other Icom's via the remote jacks and trying them as Twins? You would have full duplex and full break-in on CW.
I must admit I haven't - I'm a little ignorant as to how the remote function works; thanks for letting me know about something I should look into! 73, Jarrad VK3BL :)
Cool receiver, but I got to ask, who would pay $2,000 plus for just a receiver like this, when they can get a full fledge icom ham radio transceiver with similar features for the same if not less money? Are the GHZ frequencies really that desirable to pick up? Maybe I'm missing something/
Thats my thoughts
I want to scan 10khz - 300khz in CW mode can this be accomplish ? Looking for transmissions to submarine, Thank you ,Maxton
hi steve again ,its also saying scope out of range.thanks steve.
Very nice demonstration. Thanks for showing the scanning performance. Very fast and very useful as a scanner, even it has spectrum scope.
I heard, that ICom going to release handheld communication receiver IC-R30. which may be affordable to som of us. :)
Thank you for the walkthrough demonstration.
Bahahtir, 9W2GNU,.. 73.
Dear Bahahtir; you're welcome. Please accept my apologies for the random audio 'clicks' throughout the video; it seems my mixer's USB interface had some buffering issues whilst plugged into my recording device. I've since discovered a work around :)
I've already recorded some more IC-R8600 content in the future, and will be releasing it shortly. It is free of this issue - the solution was to directly pair my wifi camera with my iPad during recording.
Modern technology, always something to go wrong :)
73, Jarrad
Rate My Radio
No problem at all. We all already used with high QRM, QSB, RFI .. THe glitches were easyliy ignarable. :) 59+ :)
Dear Bahathir :)
Yes, I have found Hams to be most accommodating of small mistakes such as these :). But like our Ham station, we are committed to continual improvement hihi!
Despite many attempts, I could not get the audio to stream properly to my camera. In future, I will be syncing an externally recorded track using iMovie so that none of these issues occur.
PS, what IC-R30 rumours have your heard? It sounds interesting!
73,
Jarrad
Rate My Radio
QSL. Actually, I come to amateur radio from audio hobby, for many years. :)
Yes, USB has latency and sometime buffering due to complex system for general purpose. So, a dedicated audio recorder is a great tool for high quality production. THere are several companies making professional audio gears, such as Sony, TASCAM, FOSTEX, .., with several options to choose.
We can get a dedicated audio recorder such as Sony PCM D100, or mixer with built-in digital recorder. or very complex system such as TriCaster.
Hope it gives some insight and have a nice day.
Thank you.
Rate My Radio
Dear Sir,
Re: Icom IC-R30.
You can search Icom IC-R30 in YouTUbe, and several clips are from Tokyo Hamfest.
ua-cam.com/video/ZpYhIQSIyBA/v-deo.html
BTW, there is also other manufacturers for scanners too.
THis handheld scanner can decode several digital modes including DMR.
AOR AR-DV10
ua-cam.com/video/sGHFJaVeS9c/v-deo.html
Thank you.
I have bought an icom r8600,could you help me i have read the instructions over and over again to get the waterfall on the screen,instructions say you can turn the waterfall on and off,but it does not tell me how to turn it on and off,could you help thanks steve.
I find the audio of the 8600 much better than the 7610. I'm running 1.34 firmware on the 8600
I believe the 8600 (same as the 7300) uses a different DSP to the 7610. Personally the 7610 is slightly better for me but I run a Yaesu SP-2000 external speaker. 73, Jarrad VK3BL :)
can you use something like that with a small antenna that fits nicely inside your radio room?
I suppose u could use a coat hanger if u wanted, but no. For shortwave, u need a full-sized antenna & for VHF, a proper hi-freq ant like a discone.
Looks tiny. Is it a better receiver than the IC-7300? Thanks Jarrad.
Any word on your IC-7610 and what the problem was?
Best 73,
Rich, K0PIR
Dear Rich,
It is tiny; a little bit smaller than the IC-7300. The receiver is better according to sherwood numbers, and it doesn't have the 200Hz high pass the 7300 is known for. All in all its impressive, and I can only assume the small stature is to aid with vehicle mounting; I certainly would prefer more 'box & knobs' for that level of money.
The response re: my IC-7610 was not conclusive unfortunately, however I was offered a replacement unit which I accepted; so far so good :)
73, Jarrad
The only device where not reading the manual that makes sense is an Umbrella manual.That radio is full of detailed functionality.
Its part joke, and part test Mark; Apple (under Steve Jobs) introduced us to the concept that intuitive usability is the a hallmark of good design. The IC-R8600 passes with flying colours; you can have a lot of enjoyment with it without having to study the manual in depth nightly if you are remotely familiar with the Icom Interface paradigm :)
Rate My Radio Perhaps?
My formal education is in Sociology, and Philosophy. So one of my interests is how well 'man' and 'machine' meld; in other words, how simple things are to use.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Its the 'product design' embodiment of Occam's Razor.
Of course, I could just be using fancy words to justify laziness; we'll never know :). But I assure you all the good features will be covered in depth in seperate videos :)
73, Jarrad
Thanks for the video. My only critique is that It sounds like you have some sort of noise reduction activated on your voice and for someone like me listening through large speakers with bass response it doesn't sound good at all. Your voice sounds like it is constantly on the verge of being cut off. Nothing major I guess but it doesn't make the video enjoyable to watch because all I can concentrate on is your voice being c
choppy and making popping noises. Again other than that thanks for the vid.
Dear Dark. Unfortunately its a valid critique and a function of a poor microphone and soft palate aka teeth issues. We’ve got better equipment now and I’ve invested a few thousand this year getting my teeth restored - I suffer from continual grinding aka Bruxism. 73, Jarrad VK3BL :)
@@RateMyRadio Hey thanks for the reply. Glad to hear about the upgrades on your equipment, and your teeth :-D totally worth it.
I would like to know who is sending morse code in the air.
2000 usd huh
I have the German EKD and Telefunke E serie radio there is not better on the market you guys spent a lot of money for nothing
No DMR = EPIC FAIL. Icom get your head out of the sand.
I want to scan 10khz - 300khz in CW mode can this be accomplish ? Looking for transmissions to submarine, Thank you ,Maxton