On 8/9/11 5:07 PM, Eric Greenwell wrote:
I recently bought an Icom A6 transceiver for use as a crew radio, and
have discovered several issues with it. Perhaps someone can make
suggestions for improving the situation:

Shocks

My wife was driving the motorhome while I was flying. After about an
hour that included a few transmissions and replies, she got some
tingling, then a shock from the A6. She put it down, and a bit later,
tried it again, with the same result except even stronger. There was
some lightning a few miles away, and some occasional light rain.

The A6 was connected to an external 3/4 wave Rainco antenna, but the
radio was operating on it's own battery and not plugged into the
motorhome battery power. Our previous radio never shocked her in 24
years, but was always plugged into the cigar lighter socket, so I
suspect that might have something to do with it. Has anyone else had
shocks from handheld radios used this way?

Interference

We discovered the some new fluorescent lights in the basement ("troffer"
style) cause a lot of static on the A6 when it's used with the external
whip antenna on top of the house. With the lights off, the squelch can
be set to 2; with the lights on, it must be set to 14 or 15 avoid the
static.

The radio is normally plugged into an Icom CP-20 Cigarette lighter
cable, which is plugged into a 12 volt output/120 VAC input bench style
power supply; however, the static and squelch settings are the same when
it's use on it's battery only.


Oh and it sounds like the florescent ballast is coupling via the AC
power wiring. That is something every eclectic guitar owner know about.
You may wan to see if you can power the radio from a different
electrical circuit in the house or look at swapping the ballasts used in
the florescent lights. They likely have poor quality electronic
ballasts. You can get low-interference electronic ones or go for
magnetic ballasts. Or some combination of all of the above.

Darryl