I spent several hours today finally breaking out of storage my three used Icom ID-1 radios. Icom discontinued the ID-1 a couple of years ago and they started to come onto the used market at somewhat reasonable prices. I'd always wanted one back in the day, and finally they were affordable used. I have a special fondness for the ID-1 because I was at the Digital Communications Conference (1996, I think) where the ID-1 was unveiled to the US market. (The reception of the crowd to that unveiling is quite the story, for another time.) I had not checked them over really before now - they arrived at times when I wasn't prepared to do anything with them, so they just got put safely into storage for later resurrection and usage.
I'm now preparing to put one of them into my data radio shelf system, and I now discover that I have only one with a proper bracket out of the three radios. Even if I had noticed back then, they were sold working, including only what was shown in the eBay sale photos.
That said, I'm unimpressed with Icom's documentation for the ID-1:
- There's no mention of the part number of the bracket for the radio. It's going to take some significant research to figure out the part number for that bracket to see if it's still available (used on other Icom radios).
- There's no mention in the documentation of the screw size on the body of the radio. Almost every other radio I have has the thread type and and maximum allowed length stamped or stickered on the side of the radio near the screw threads for the bracket. I'm going to have to get a Metric thread pitch gauge to (gently...) figure out what the socket thread is.
Glancing through the documentation, it's going to be quite the interesting challenge to get these radios programmed and back on the air. The software apparently was written for Windows 2000, but I've seen mentions of it being used on later versions.
Ah well, at least it was a beautiful day with the shop doors open as I played with radios (my version of a day out in the fresh air and sunshine).
Thanks for reading!
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Bellingham, Washington, USA
Copyright © 2021 by Steven K. Stroh