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Reviews For: ICOM HM-175GPS

Category: Microphones for ham radio

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Review Summary For : ICOM HM-175GPS
Reviews: 3MSRP: 275.00
Description:
Handheld microphone for DSTAR-HT with GPS functionality
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.icomuk.co.uk/categoryRender.asp?categoryID=3509&cCID=7363
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0034.7
SV1JRF Rating: 2013-11-21
Amazing add-on Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
An amazing add on to the HT.GPS works great and it is very accurate an fast.Audio is louder than the HT's speaker and also the mic is great. If you have the ic-e92 go and buy it because the accessory is discontinued by Icom!!!

Cons:large for handheld speaker mic

73's
M3VXJ Rating: 2008-08-04
Great add on Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
After an extremely long wait this finally arrived in early July. The mic is quite big but goes with th ic-e92d in that respect. It has a big and useful belt/lapel clip on the back. Reported Audio quality on TX excellent and on RX better than the 92's built in.

GPS functionality works well. When turned on warm, the GPS locks on very quickly (around a minute.) When cold and under cover such as in woodland it can take over 30 minutes. You need to remember to turn it on too! The Orange backlight on the GPS power button flashes when GPS is working. This is quite difficult to see in bright sunlight. Incidently, GPS accuracy is not as good as other more dedicated equipment but more than acceptable.

This is quite expensive but IMHO worth the money.
IW2CZG Rating: 2008-02-22
First impressions Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This is a new type of hand held microphone designed to provide convenient use, adding GPS functionality.
I had it few days ago and I connected it to my IC-E92D D-STAR HT radio.

It's very well made and it's waterproof.
Its size is remarkably larger than the others HT's external mics and it looks like the handheld mikes which are commonly delivered with HF transceivers.
Or even bigger.
On top you can see the GPS antenna and an LED backlighted pushbuttons to enable the GPS receiver.

Audio performances are really good (maybe also due to the size) and delivers a louder audio output if compared to the IC-E92D's internal speaker.

On the back there is a solid, detachable, clip that it can be also turned to provide extra comfort to the operator.

PTT switches it's easy to push and provides the right feeling.

Now, let's highlight the most interesting feature of this mic: the embedded GPS receiver.
When the HT is on, it has to be enabled by pushing the upper button that immediately glows in orange.
After about 1 minute (warm start) LED start blinking to show that GPS correctly acquired sats and it's transferring data to the radio.
Sensivity is good and looks like it doesn't care too much about the right positioning, or if it's sitting on the car's seat.

Once LED blinks, it's possible to use the GPS data. About that I've to say that IC-92E is definitely too complicate, and data are not presented in a smart way.
If you operate the HT in the darkness you can get disappointed about the impossibility to adjust the backlight timer, that is definitely too short.
One thing I could not understand is about the arrow that should point a fix you have in the memory (like home fix) giving you the direction to reach it. Well, probably my fault, but I found random indications, while the distance to the fix looks correct. This looks to be a bug into the HT's firmware.

I've noticed that when plugging/unplugging external DC to the radio, the GPS LED glows for a while ...

Just one question to ICOM: why it's not possible to show Maidenhead grid (LOCATOR) too ?

About the price: definitely high, at least here in Italy, but -as said- it's very well build and solid.