For People Who Make Smart Choices
ianews / March 2011 / Page 7
Icom’s On Top of Mt. Everest – Again!
Tom Ohlsson of Red Dog Radios in Lou-
isville, CO sent in this story regarding
Icom radios being used to once again
summit Mt Everest:
“I thought I’d share some photos I re-
ceived recently from Scott Woolums who
operates an extreme adventure program
headquartered at Mt. Hood, OR.
Everything was solar powered includ-
ing the 6-position bank charger and the
F121. They operate in the 2m amateur
band and I special ordered a 3-ele-
ment collapsible Yagi tuned to 146.52
with 1.05:1 VSWR. With the F121 run-
ning 5 watts, and the Yagi pointed at the
climbers, they had consistent full quiet-
ing communications for the duration of
the expedition. In fact, at one point they
were in contact with the Chinese climb-
ers coming up on the *other* side of the
mountain with nearly full quieting. Every-
one was very happy with the Base Camp
radio performance.
Some of the Sherpas were equipped
with full 1/4 wave 2m whip antennas and
speaker mics “just in case” they needed
the extra performance. There were no
incidents. In addition, not seen in any
of these photos, I built a heavy duty, col-
lapsible, 2m ground plane antenna, with
threaded/removable elements, with a
PVC base, that fits inside a 3” diameter,
24 in long tube, with a BNC/Icom thread-
ed adapter that they used at Camps 1
and 2, that is, a ground plane antenna
connected via coax to the F14 for a better
antenna. Again, full quieting at all times.
They are planning another expedition
this year and will be buying more Icom
gear. It’s not going to be a big sale, but,
having your name, brand and products
on top of the world is pretty exciting!”
Note: It is the responsibility of the radio
operator to ensure that the proper fre-
quency permits are secured and/or that
the local amateur radio laws are observed
before using any ham radio frequencies
– even in areas as remote as Mt. Everest.
IWCE 2011 Draws in the Crowds
Icom featured many new radios, systems
and accessories in its IWCE 2011 booth.
The show ran from March 7 – 9 in Las
Vegas. Although attendance was about
the same as last year, everyone felt as if
the show was busier overall.
Making its show debut was MultiTrunk,
aka IDAS multi-site digital trunking. (See
last month’s newsletter.) MultiTrunk was
demonstrated both in our booth and in
the lobby kiosk display. Our ads have
been running in Mission Critical Commu-
nications, Urgent Communications, UTC,
and Rural Electric magazines.
Launched in February, Icom’s two
new IDAS radios – the F5121D series
mobiles and F3101D series portables –
made their IWCE debut. Also making its
first showing was the F5011 analog mo-
bile. All three new models have been well
received, and IWCE visitors took notice.
The P25 tables saw a preview of a
coming new handheld speaker mic ac-
cessory called RedHawk SA. See the
sidebar on this page.
Over in Systems, IAS teamed up with
Etherstack to have working P25 repeater
stacks on display. IAS offers end-to-end
P25 solutions, whether its for conven-
tional or for trunking systems – single-
site or multi-site. Of course, they’re also
analog backwards compatible.
Several third-party manufacturers
came up with displays in the Icom booth.
Telex had a dispatch station set up near
the center of the booth, and Otto show-
cased a host of new options for Icom’s
F9011 series P25 portables.
