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Reviews For: Icom IC-451A

Category: Transceivers: VHF/UHF+ Amateur Base/Mobile (non hand-held)

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Review Summary For : Icom IC-451A
Reviews: 3MSRP:
Description:
70 cm (UHF) all mode base rig
Product is not in production
More Info: http://www.icomclassic.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0034.7
M0BTZ Rating: 2012-07-30
Excellent and reliable workhorse for the 70cm band Time Owned: more than 12 months.
This is now an old classic 70cm radio, but I still say it is a good one for a number of reasons.

I have have much more opportunity to use it on 70cm than before, especially in the 70cm UKAC contests, so I decided to give a follow up review :-

1) Build Quality : This is getting on for being a 30 year old radio, but it still works fb! Has a solid and tough metal chassis. It also uses old fashioned through hole components so it is possible to service it.

2) Stability : Apart from a bit of warm-up drift upon switch on. It is very stable.

3)Front panel layout. Very simple to operate and good ergonomics (with one exception - see below.)

I have two slight gripes with the radio which I learned to live with:-

I also operate the IC-251E and IC-551 so am used to the same front panel layout. For some reason the "TS" button is moved to one of the toggle switches. and the push button is used to select MHz. This is inconsistant with the IC-251 and IC-551 and I am forever pushing the MHz button to select TS by mistake! I wish icom had kept the panel layout consistant between the three radios.

One thing in common with the IC-251 and IC-451 is I have always liked the large tuning knob and the green florescent display - easy to read in the dark!

I have noticed that occasionally during use the rig is tuned to a different frequency than indicated! (easily cured by a power on-off reset.)

The sensitivity is a little deaf with the existing old d.g. mosfet. Replacing this with a more modern BF998 device instead really helped to lower the noise figure, and raise the gain slightly.

It is still a great used 70cm allmode radio on the secondhand market for SSB/CW operation.

Obviously there is no CTCSS capability in this old rig, but aftermarket boards will help fix that issue.

If i look after it, I would not be suprised to see this last another 10 years at least.

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Earlier 4-star review posted by M0BTZ on 2003-03-04

I very much like this radio, it is very easy to use and has a lack of bells and whistles which I like. I love the appearance of the IC451 in particular. However, I found the receive to be slightly deaf but I have modded the rig to solve this problem (replaced the noisy MOSFET in the front end). I use mine with a 100W microwave modules amp and get good reports with it.
I only use mine on SSB & CW and it works great.
I got mine second hand in very good condition.It has proved its worth and would be a very nice addition to any hams shack.
My main complaint is that the receive audio sounds thin compared to my IC251 and IC551. I would like to hear from anyone who has experienced the same problem and what can be done to solve it.
N3WXW Rating: 2008-07-03
Hot RECIVER Time Owned: more than 12 months.
IF YOU WANT A HIGH PERFORMACE 70 CENTEMETER ALL MODE . THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST.My station is a r-70,720a,551,251,451. Every one of these radios beats the performance of my Knwd TS 2000.But of course have lower power ,less options and take up alot of space.
M1PAC Rating: 2002-08-14
NOT 4 BEGINERS Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
I started as a radio ham as a novice (2E1HDI) and as such at the time we were only allowed to use the 70cm band,and this radio turned up at my local ham radio shop(LAR) and as I liked multimodes as a (CB)operator I thought buying this one would be a good idea.
I had lots of contacts on the repeater,s in and around my area, after I had figured out how to use the shift,(transmit A recive B and the reverse transmit B recive A),the tone burst was a pain to use at first.
The IC 451-e was a 10 watt radio, the recive was exeptional, and the transmit audio was always given as RADIO 5.. both on SSB and FM.
The microphone dropped to bits after a while in as much as it started to crackle and creak, but I purchased a standard CB coffin mike and that fixed that .A lighting storm popped the power supply, (a switched mode one in a tight box all shielded from FR but a real pain to get to).If you have one of these radio's and are susceptible to lightning strikes then get a rod or a lightning aresstor.There is a 2 Mtr version of this radio and I would like to get my hands on one of them if anyone has one they would like to sell you can reach me on philcole@mailcity.com or m1pac@talk21.com

M1PAC