Icom IC-PCR100

It's seems that computer-only controlled receivers are the up and coming thing and appears to have started with the Rosetta Laboratories WR-1000. This was countered by Icom with their IC-PCR1000 black brick. WiNRADiO decided to add three more models to their hobbyist line, two of which took the Icom approach of using an external box driven by the PC serial port. Even Ten-Tec has entered the fray with their computer controlled RS-320 HF receiver which has gotten rave reviews. Not to be left behind, Icom has decided to market a second receiver on the heels of their popular IC-PCR1000. But instead of widening the receive range and adding more features as WinRADiO did, Icom decided to remove some features and change the construction of their newest black box. By doing so, it seems they intend to appeal to those hobbyists who can't afford the current $500 - $600 receivers in this market. Let's just see if such a radio can still appeal to the majority of listeners in today's market. What follows are my personal impressions regarding the features and performance of this receiver. This, in no way, should be viewed as an endorsement to purchase this radio nor is it intended to discourage anyone from buying it. I have no personal or business relations with Icom Corp. These are simply thoughts offered to my fellow hobbyists who may be interested in purchasing this particular radio or learning more about it. A lot of hard work and effort has gone into the testing and writing of this review. I would appreciate it if every effort is made to keep this document whole with me as the original author. Of course, it doesn't hurt that this document is copyrighted and therefore protected by US law and international treaties governing intellectual property. Except for personal use, and for the sake of brief passages quoted in reviews and given appropriate credit, no part of this work may be reproduced in any forms or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author. Thank you and enjoy! Rich Wells N2MCA Strong Signals web site

This document contains the following sections:

What You Get

Model Tested

Basic Specs

Introduction

Instruction Manual

Major Differences Compared To The PCR1000

Comparing The Specifications Of Both Radios

Construction and Physical

Installation

Antenna

Main Receiver Interface

Alternate Receiver Interface

Miscellaneous User Interfaces

VFO

Memory

Scanning

Searching

Priority

Band Scope

RFI Suppression

VHF/UHF Performance

HF Performance

Ranking

Things I Like

Things I Would Change

Summary

Recommendation

Major Differences Compared To The PCR1000

Top and sides of case are plastic

Antenna is a 20' wire

No power switch

No discriminator output

No IF shift

No selectable AFC

No selectable AGC

No VSC

No NB

No SSB/CW

Minimum step of 1 kHz

Software is a 32-bit app for Windows 95/98

Audio is always muted during all bandscope use

Audio output is software controlled (mono/stereo, speaker/line)

Comes with a "real" manual (unlike early PCR1000s)

Nearly same width and height but 2" shorter - picture

Weighs about half as much (18 oz vs. 35 oz)

Construction and Physical

IC-PCR100 & IC-PCR1000

Unlike the PCR1000 which is entirely clad in metal, the PCR100 is surrounded by a black plastic case and surely helps to keep the overall cost down

The front panel houses only a green LED which is lit during actual operation of the unit. There is no power switch like the PCR1000

Like the PCR1000, the speaker is in the front, right corner

At the rear edge of the top panel, just like on the PCR1000, there are labels with arrows to help indicate the position of the rear panel connectors and jacks

Looking at the rear panel we see the RS-232 9-pin connector, 1/8" external speaker jack, DC power jack, grounding terminal with screw and BNC antenna connector - picture

Bottom panel has four felt feet near each corner and the usual radio identification sticker with serial number

Interestingly, there are three holes in the metal plate which are non-symmetrical in placement and each of these has been tapped with threads

While my PCR1000 gets quite warm while scanning, the new PCR100 gets blisteringly HOT! As such, I keep both units on their sides to help facilitate cooling

At the very minimum, most buyers purchase some thicker rubber feet to stick on the bottom and give more surface clearance. Some have even gone so far as to buy a dedicated fan for their radios

Four screws hold the case into place and once removed allow easy access to the innards

The speaker is glued into place on the top panel and a wire jumper leads to the single PC board mounted to the metal bottom panel. A simple molex connector allows the wire to be detached

There's also a piece of foam plastic glued to the top panel which I'll assume is used to keep case vibrations to a minimum when the audio is cranked up

Nearly half of the PC board is covered on top and bottom by a metal enclosure designed to keep interference away from the receiver electronics

Connected to the grounding terminal is a large piece of spring metal which, once the cover is put on, is pressed downward and makes contact with the metal enclosure

Main Receiver Interface

The very first time you start the program, you'll be prompted to supply the serial communications port to be used to interface to the PCR100. Once this is done, you won't be prompted again

If all goes well, you'll hear a faint click from the speaker, the green LED will light and you'll see the main program window

The first thing I have to mention is that there is no way to minimize this window. I don't know what genius thought this one up but they had better take Windows 101 programming again until they get a passing grade

Here's a picture of this window

As you can see, it is rather large which should keep anyone from having to squint to operate the controls or read the text

Its appearance matches what most will consider to be the front panel of an actual radio

Beneath the window's menu bar is a tool bar allowing quick access to heavily used features. This tool bar can be removed to help save screen real estate if desired

The most interesting feature of the tool bar is the control which allows access to the speaker controls as accessed via the jack on the rear panel

These controls allow the speaker plug to be set to a stereo or monaural signal. It also allows the output level to be normal speaker or a low-power line signal

Be advised that while this control window is up, the audio is muted from the built-in speaker

The largest portion of this window is taken up by the virtual LCD

This one LCD is designed to convey all information whether in VFO, memory, scanning or band scope mode

LCD labels are drawn in green while all the indicators, alpha-tags and frequency are drawn in yellow. The S-meter is rendered in yellow and red bars

An interesting exception to these color rules is a feature which, when tuning in wide FM mode, should you tune a stereo signal, the WFM indicator changes from yellow to red

Right below the LCD are controls to toggle use of the attenuator, auto noise limiter (ANL) and tone squelch

If tone squelch is selected, it brings up a separate, small window allowing selection of the desired tone value.

You can select a tone by selecting from a list of the values or simply use the up and down arrow keys.

It takes about 300 milliseconds for the decoder to lock onto a tone. I find it useful to watch the BUSY indicator on the S-meter. Once it displays, there's an active transmission so I start pressing the down arrow on the tone control to sequence through the values, about one every half second. Doesn't take too long to detect if there's a tone in use or not

Next to this set of controls are a series of buttons allow the receive mode to be selected which includes the auto-mode setting

Below this are the Volume and Squelch controls and next to them, the band scope controls

The VOLUME and SQUELCH controls all work by placing the mouse over the desired control and then click the left mouse button to turn the control counter-clockwise and the right mouse button to turn it clockwise

At the end of the band scope controls is the SPEED control used to control the rate of scanning. Beneath it is the DELAY control used to select the maximum time scanning will stop on a signal if this is the current mode. Both controls interact with the mouse just like the VOLUME and SQUELCH

The final row of controls under the LCD allows selection of the IF filter used as well as the scanning mode controls

As the IF filter is changed, the graphical "filter envelope" on the display changes accordingly

If AM mode is selected, the default IF filter is 6 kHz, but 15 and 50 kHz can also be selected

If FM mode is selected, the default IF filter is 15 kHz, but 6 and 50 kHz can also be selected

If WFM mode is selected, the default IF filter is 230 kHz, but 50 kHz can also be selected

To the right of the virtual LCD is a keypad which is used to key in frequencies for VFO mode, or channel numbers for memory mode

Beneath this are two buttons which allow the tuning step size to be adjusted

Beneath this is the large rotary control dial which is used to tune the VFO frequency. It interacts with the mouse just like the other circular controls

Along the far right hand side of the window are controls used to move about while in memory mode which includes the bank and channel selectors

There is also a Bank selection from the window menubar which lists all 20 banks and their alpha-tags. This allows a bank to be selected immediately for viewing

Beneath this are the memory write and clear buttons used to write frequency data to a selected memory channel or to clear its contents, respectively

Alternate Receiver Interface

Should you decide that the main interface takes up too much screen real estate, you can bring up what Icom calls the 'simple function receiver screen'

Here's a picture of it

This screen allows only the most spartan of features and indicators to be accessed. This window can not be minimized either

The receive mode, signal strength and frequency are immediately evident

If in memory mode, the channel name will be displayed as well

The BANK button allows a different memory bank to be accessed while the five blue buttons allow the first five channels of the current bank to be tuned

The menu button is used to bring up other windows or revert to the full-featured receiver screen

At the very end, there are two volume controls as well as a vertical graph which indicates the current volume setting

To bring up a sibling window which displays a bit more status information, it is easiest to simply double-click on the black portion of the readout

Here's a picture of the new display

This new display shows the S-meter BUSY indicator, ATT and ANL settings, current bank number, bank name, filter setting, tuning step and tone squelch value

When using this interface to save screen space, you'll also probably want to use the auxiliary screens necessary to actually change various receiver settings. These screens can be brought up by using the MENU button

The function controller screen is a small, separate window allowing the receive mode, filter width, attenuator, ANL, tone squelch and tuning step to be selected. It also allows the frequency to be changed one step at a time and the squelch control setting to be changed

The scan controller screen is a small, separate window allowing various scan modes to be started and stopped as well as containing a readout displaying the current scanning state. The SPEED and DELAY controls from the main user interface are also replicated here for easy access

The band scope screen is a larger version of the one presented on the main user interface when in band scope mode. Besides the expected graphical signal display, there are also controls allowing the scope to be turned on and off and the frequency span to be adjusted in four different ranges

Band Scope

The band scope is used to graphically display the activity on the frequencies adjacent to the currently tuned frequency

The band scope on the PCR100 is almost identical to that found on the PCR1000

The big exceptions are that it always mutes the signal while the band scope is active and it can display up to 2 MHz either side of the tuned frequency

Here's a picture of the band scope in action right beneath the tuned frequency

Just like the PCR100, when the scope is started, the tuned frequency appears as a yellow bar while the step-tuned frequencies to either side appear in blue

The vertical height of a bar indicates its relative strength

The width of the display can be set to ±100 kHz, ±500 kHz, ±1 MHz or ±2 MHz

Placing the mouse over a blue bar and clicking will instantly tune the receiver to that signal and update the band scope accordingly

Here's the ranking criteria

Things I Like

Wide receive range

Ability to download latest software from Internet

Consistent noise floor for scanning/searching

Selectable filters

Tone squelch

Limited keyboard interface manipulation

Small size

Things I Would Change

Needs search lockout

Allow more than one bank at a time to be scanned

Provide automatic bandplan

Add more entries for the user band plan

Add more program scan entries

Add VFO search

Add priority scheme

Add tone search

Need import/export utilities for database management

Display which memory file is loaded

Integrate an audio recorder

Thicker rubber feet for more clearance and better cooling

Summary

The receiver itself is quite nice and provides performance one would not normally expect in this price range

The wide, continuous receive range will appeal to many

Tone squelch is a handy feature and is still missing from a majority of today's receivers

The flexibility for modes, steps, filters and tone squelch is a big plus

It is under powered for scanning and searching

Lack of search lockouts and priority is almost sinful

Lack of support for importing DBF files is almost as bad

The user interface is fairly easy to run once you get a grip on all of the radio features and terminology

Recommendation

For the price, you get a pretty nice receiver but not much of a scanner. But that's pretty much how it goes when talking about Icom equipment

Many will be turned off by the usual single bank scanning and quite limited scan/search speed, some of which can be remedied with third party software eventually

Lack of search lockout and priority is simply mind-numbing when you consider this is a computer-controlled radio

With this radio's dynamic range, an external discone for VHF/UHF and a modest long wire for HF will make the receiver really shine

I hope to see this receiver supported by the third party developers and hobbyists which will allow this radio to appeal to a wider audience

At this point in time, many radio dealers still carry the PCR1000 for $400. Compared to the $310 of this radio, it is pretty much a no-brainer to pick the PCR1000 for all the additional goodies you get for the $90 difference...especially if you plan to do more then dabble in HF or need the discriminator output

Once the PCR1000 goes back up to $500+, the PCR100 will be a much better value

February 21, 1999

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Copyright © 2010 by Richard J. Wells