The ICOM M-802 marine single sideband transceiver is now in it’s fourth year of production, and holds a whopping lead of market share over Furuno, JRC, SGC, Raymarine, and SEA. It is the first under-$1995 marine SSB transceiver to include full Digital Selective Calling (DSC) emergency, red button capability, with a simple tie-in to an on board GPS data stream.

Add to the M-802’s DSC capability its built-in separate DSC scanning receiver with the inclusion of a digital signal processor chip, designed for internal included filter settings for narrow bandwidth signals when operating email. The head is fully remote and waterproof, with big bold amber display for frequency, channel or alpha-numeric channel names, and full computer control with its included DIN and RS-232 C connectors.

When the M-802 first hit the shelves, sailors were all set to take advantage of the “one touch email button” for quick access to the pre-programmed email frequency list. First surprise, email providers like marine SailMail and ham radio AirMail required an additional external $999 modem, allowing the equipment to run lightening fast Pactor III signaling to send and receive emails all over the world.

For ham radio buffs, we were delighted to see a straight forward, three button maneuver to engage ham radio transmit capability. There was no longer the ICOM required computer clone unlock for frequencies not already stored in the radio’s memory. And more good news for hams, you could move up and down the ham band in micro or major tuning steps, with transmit always following receive, so there was no additional need to program transmit channels.

From the beginning, I detected the M-802 as feeble on average voice transmit output. While you could whistle for 150 watts on an oscilloscope, you would only see 100 watts peak on a professional Bird watt meter. And as you talked and gave your local weather conditions, the thru-line watt meter would amble in the 20 to 40 watt region. Close talking the noise canceling mike and raising your voice would help. An early-on control head, SMT (surface mount technology) chip removal squeaked out a few more watts, but power output compared to an original ICOM M-700 was noticeably less.

Also, a peculiar cut out problem was associated with running the radio on certain bands, first documented by SSB experts Don Melcher, Shea Weston, and Gary Jensen on the east coast. This clipping problem was attributed to a likely intermittent antenna connection to the backstay, or a ground fault somewhere in the bilge ground foil run.

Repeated letters and phone calls to ICOM America kept suggesting the high modulation power peaks were clipping because an element in the antenna system or ground system was breaking down with the increased high frequency currents in the conductors.

Over a year ago, SailMail expert Shea Weston, with Offshore Outfitters in San Diego and I conducted bench tests with our own ICOM high frequency base station systems, and the fault would regularly occur on the equipment we tested when the standing wave ratio (reflected power from the tuner) exceeded 1.8:1 – a modest “backwash” of RF energy, not resolved by the ICOM AT-140 antenna tuner input circuitry.

“As soon as I would resolve this slightly elevated SWR, the clipping problem was eliminated,” comments Weston, the guy everyone in San Diego was turning to before the Baja HaHa. I saw the same things with SSBs heading for Puerto Vallarta in the Del Rey Yacht Club race as well as clipping on some of the 802’s going on the Cabo race.

All the while, legendary radio weather prognosticator, Don Anderson, on his 8122 kHz Amigo Net, was also hearing a number of M-802s breaking up on transmitted voice peaks. Some breakups occurred on 8 MHz, some on his ham nets, and, unfortunately, race communications channels 4 Alpha (4146 kHz), 4 Bravo, and 4 Charlie made up a common “ICOM clipper” zone among regatta participants. Everyone agreed that this was a safety hazard, so Don Anderson began sending to ICOM America computer audio clips to further document that there was a big problem in ICOM 802 radio land.

To the rescue comes ICOM Technical Service Manager, (TSM) Rodney Grim, with 40 years experience in long range marine radio and plenty of deep sea radio duties, from Antarctica research vessel to his Catalina 34. Grim recognized the obvious “ICOM clipper” outtakes, had heard of my several years of unresolved correspondence about this same cut out problem, and spent several weeks in Mexico working on sailing ships exhibiting this transmitting fubar.

“Mariners with reported transmit clipping problems might easily develop an on-board cure by renewing the high voltage GTO-15 wire run from the automatic tuner to than absolute positive connection to the insulated backstay or SSB whip,” reports Rodney Grim during a special trip to Southern California meeting with marine electronics experts to help find a cure.

“Equally important as the antenna elements is the copper foil ground run to an underwater grounding system,” adds Grim, pointing out that any fuzzy antenna or fuzzy ground conductor could break down on conductivity during voice peaks.

The automatic antenna tuner will snap in various amounts of coils and fixed capacitors in an L match network to present the radio with the lowest SWR possible. Most radio experts agree that modern relay switching automatic tuners are miraculous in all they can do, but cannot necessarily achieve the absolute lowest SWR if the internal coils and capacitors don’t add up to the right combination. Anything BELOW 1.8:1 would be ideal, and readings of 2:1 only resulting in a 12% return of reflected power well within reason for a broad band radio.

It has been determined that the ICOM M-802 has a built-in SWR protection circuit that will activate instantly at around 1.8:1, resulting in clipping out the transmitter for VSWR protection, then instantly coming back at the higher power level. This makes the cut out extremely noticeable and aggravating to the receiving stations.

“On our other marine SSB transceivers, an elevated SWR will cause our equipment to gradually pull back power commensurate with the amount of SWR. This gradual reduction, to protect our final transistors, is hardly noticed because the entire transmission is slightly reduced in overall output,” comments Grim.

With the ICOM M-802 the cut out and cut back in is so abrupt that there is no mistaking the deep transmitter power reduction and instant return to stronger power output. You would know that a strong signal is there, but is regularly chopping out on voice peaks.

In Japan, ICOM home company engineers studied this problem for nearly a year, tracing the problem to the power down SWR power control circuitry of fixed components in the automatic power control (APC) section on the main board. In ham radio equipment, it is usually a variable control labeled “SWR PRO” for PROtection. Unfortunately, this circuit has no easy capacitor or pot controls, and only a surface mount technology (SMT) chip where the Bellevue, Washington factory fix will reduce the abrupt action to elevated SWR.

Because every vessel installation has unknown sea water grounding potentials and unknown backstay and lead in lengths, the automatic tuner, with thousands of relay combinations of inductance (L) and capacitance(C), won’t necessarily bring every single frequency on any one band down to a perfect 1.1:1. If it could, there would be no “ICOM clipper” problems!

Here is your cure:

Step 1: Many mariners report NO problems with clipping. Run some radio tests with fellow sailors, and see if you are loud and clear. If you are, on all of the ship to ship channels, and ham channels if you are licensed, do nothing. Your system is probably fine.

Step 2: Oh, they say you are cutting out on a specific band? If your installation is older, start replacing antenna lead in wires and upgrade your ground system. If the clipping stops, you obviously fixed an intermittent antenna or ground conductor.

Step 3: If your installation is prime and everybody screams at you that you are breaking up on 4 MHz or 8MHz, or ham 7 MHZ or ham 14 MHz, resign yourself to getting a quick factory fix.

All they need is the black box. You won’t need to rip out your nav station to get at the head, nor any associated wiring attached to the radio. Just the black box.

Label all the wires as you disconnect, especially if you have an email modem plugged in. Pack ONLY the black box, and ship it up to:

ICOM America
Service Administrator, Lorie Phillips
2380 116th Ave N E
Bellevue, Washington 98004

There is no need to call for a return authorization, but be sure to include a note indicating “CUT OUT IMPROVEMENT and NEW USER CHANNEL FREQUENCY LOAD”.

That last request, new user channel frequency load, is only for those newer radios that were shipped with an abbreviated user programmable frequency load which omitted the required simplex ALPHA and BRAVO ship to ship channels for race communications and were also missing the ham weather channels and also missing the important WWV signals and high seas telephone service. There is now a new channel load, from 1 to 160, that will make operating your ICOM M-802 more intelligent and easier.

When you get your radio back from this free modification, courtesy of ICOM America, you should be impressed with the terrific signal reports you will be receiving over the SSB airwaves.

Thanks to ICOM America and ICOM’s Rodney Grim and RJ, Sr., for taking this pro-active approach to remedy a final transistor output protection circuit problem simply too aggressive for common shipboard installations.