Re: VHF Problem
I had one of those radios back in the early 90's. Other than a display window about the size of a postage stamp I liked the radio real well and never had any problem with it. Somehow deep in the back of my mind, and like I said, its been over a decade since I owned one of them, but I think that blinking display may have been a warning signal for low voltage. If that's the case it could have been caused by a bit of corrosion somewhere in the power supply or even at the plug in the back of the radio.<br /><br />At any rate you sure didn't make a mistake buying that M402. By the way, and this depends on which version of the 402 you got, but some of them have DSC related NMEA output as well as input.<br /><br />All new radios are DSC capable of course but for the vast majority of them that simply means that the accept NMEA input from the GPS so that they can squawk your location in the event of an emergency, or be used for all-ships or ship-t0-ship calls. The thing is that ICOM's model 402 comes in two version, the early plain 402 and a later version, the 402A, which came out last winter. The 402A has NMEA output and that means that you can also connect it to the data input line on your GPS and gain an interesting feature. If you have it and you hear another DSC equiped radio broadcast what will happen is that its location will pop up on your GPS screen. You can see where the person you are talking to is located. Very few folks are aware of the differences between the two models, in fact half of the salesperson behind the counters don't even know there are two different versions of the radio. I just thought you'd like to know. If you already have the GPS it only takes a few minutes to hook them together and a couple of bucks worth of connectors (that you can get at Radio Shack). Oh, and you need to get an MMSI but that is free.<br /><br />Thom
)<br /><br />Anyway, I was just curious how you like your new ICOM 402S? Been looking thru the manual and seems like a great radio.