Wings on High.

New radio – Icom IC-A24 w/ NAV & COM.

I’ve been shopping around for a while to find a decent hand-held scanner.  My main goal was to have something I could listen to ATC with while at the airport or at the park, and get some forewarning about cool shots I needed to get ready to take (such as a trio of F15s coming in for a ball game.)

I stopped by a pilot supply store at Boeing Field last sunday and did some poking around with the scanners they had.  While decent, they were still between $100 and $150.  A fair price, but a few pennies that would only receive, when I knew that further down the road I’d want a full on transceiver for comms from the ground, or if my radio stack died while I was mid-flight.  They had a mid-level Icom A6 (which I greatly prefer over the new design of the A14) for about $250.  I went home and did some research for a few days about makes, models, and various preferences.  I was intending on picking up the A6, when I called and discovered they’d just received a few A24′s (with NAV features).  So I did some more research.

I talked with a few experienced pilot associates, and some fact finding on the net.  I heard on more than one occasion that Icom is the standard, and anything else is more or less a waste.  Then I did some research on the differences between the various Icom models, and the pricing.  I soon came to the conclusion that if I didn’t get the A24 now, I’d certainly want to later.  Rather than spend $150 on a scanner, or $250 on a radio that I’d use but didn’t have the NAV/VOR functions, I decided to drop the $300 on the A24 (rather than $150 on a scanner now, $250 on a mid-range handset then, and $350 on the A24 when I wanted NAV functions).  I got the store to price match with Sporty’s online (after shipping of course), and headed home with my new handset, and a copy of the ’09 FAR/AIM.

Well, let me be the first to say that the IC-A24 is a great handset.  It feels built like a tank, comes with good accessories (belt clip, faux-leather case with clear keypad screen, and a headset/mic/tape recorder plug to connect standard aviation headsets to it for flying duties), and has an assortment of features built in.  It has a rather large memory capacity, which I’ve already set to work in filling in.  My personal config has one bank with all the KBFI frequencies, one bank with all the KSEA approach and ground frequencies, and another bank with all the unicoms of the smaller fields I’ll be flying to and from, identified by name (each memory preset has a 6-char name you can program in, such as BFITWR or SEAGND for instance).  You can enable scanning of each memory preset in banks by a “tag”, which is a flag to either include or exclude the preset in frequency scanning.

Another feature is the duplex frequency operation between NAV and COM channels.  Not only will it give you VOR functions coming to or from a site, but you can also conduct vox communications on another frequency without having to hop back and forth, or lose your NAV channel.

The battery it came with is NiMH, which is great to avoid battery memory effect and require topping off.  And they’re relatively cheap to replace, or get additional batteries.  The screen is a good size, the main info (frequency or name) is very easy to read, it’s got a great backlight, and you can plug a standard headset 1/8th” – same size as your CD or MP3 player) into the side without the adapter.  It’s mono, but no big deal – lets me pop an earpiece in while I’m at the field, and keep another ear out to listen around me.  As with most of the other radios, the antenna is a standard BNC connector that twists off rather easily, so you can pack it without worrying about snapping the antenna, or (best part) connect it to an external antenna (such as one attached to your airplane window for emergency use).

Aesthetically, and I know this is entirely superficial, it looks the way I’d expect a radio to.  The new design of the A14′s (to me) look like glorified cell phones.  The screens are miniscule, the buttons odd, and they look chintzy.  Even though I recognize the A24 could be phased out before too long, I’m definitely glad I snagged one when I did.

That’s about all I can say right now for the review of this handset.  I expect to have this for quite some time, and hope to put it through its paces, including the NAV functions, before too long.  If you’re looking for a new handset, pick one of these up.