The IC-202 is one of Icom's most memorable radios ever produced. It entered the HAM scene around 1976, so quite a while back. It was the result of a great thinking-out-of-the-box effort, putting Icom on the map as the most innovative designer/manufacturer of Ham equipment.

The Icom IC-202S was the updated c.1980 version of the venerable (1976 or so) IC-202 2m SSB/CW "bookshelf" portable. The main difference between the IC-202S and the IC-202 was the addition of LSB capability for satellite work and the fact that the antenna was removable.

The IC-502 was a simple rig with an analog VFO. The rig has a very hot receiver and a really quiet front end. The IC-502 has just a few controls: a large main tuning knob, an RIT control, a power/light switch, a volume control, a noise blanker switch, and a CW-T/receive switch.

Icom IC-202: 9: 2021-11-30 (4.9) Icom IC-202S: 7: 2013-05-21: GBP169 (4.9) ICOM IC-207H: 113: 2019-01-16: 299.95 (3.9) Icom IC-208H: 138: 2023-10-05: 319.95 (4.4) ICOM IC-2100H: 196: 2022-08-14: 140 (4.5) ... ICOM IC 28H (4.7) Icom IC-290A/H: 14: 2025-01-12 (4.1) Icom IC-3200A: 16: 2020-10-25: $120 (3.9) Icom IC-3210A: 4: 2013-10-15 (4.8) Icom ...

The IC-201 was an analog rig, similar to the Kenwood TS-700A or Yaesu FT-221, but a little bit smaller. Like those rigs the IC-201 had a very decent receiver, though the audio seemed to be lacking presence and favored the high end. Transmit power was 10W, and I got good audio reports consistently.

The IC-3PE is a power supply Icom marketed back in the very late '70s and early '80s to match their then current 10W VHF/UHF mobile rigs. Rigs that fit on top included the IC-280, IC-245, IC-24E, IC-22U, IC-22S, IC-22A, IC-22, IC-20, IC-230, IC-220, IC-30A, IC-30, IC-320, and IC-60.

The rig, like an Icom IC-202, is VXO controlled, with each crystal providing just 50Hz of coverage, compared to 200kHz on the later SB-2X. 144.100-144.300 rocks for the four slots were provided stock from the factory.

After having good experiences with the IC-202, I had expected a better hardware-quality. The ribbon-cable-contact-problems and the sticky knobs are a shame for a 2000 €/$- rig. The receiver is o.k. on 2m. On 70cm the receiving noise increases when the antenna (or 50 Ohm load) is disconnected, which indicates wild oscillations in the frontend.

got the IC-Q7A to replace a sick and aging HTX-202...man, what a difference 5 years make! True, the IC-Q7A doesn't put out near as much pwr as the HTX-202, but what it lacks in xmt pwr, it makes up in sheer versatility: dual bands, wide band receive, plenty of memory, decent sound output, fairly easy to program...about the only thing I don't ...

The Icom IC-502A was an updated version of the original IC-502, part of Icom's "bookshelf portable" series. The original Icom IC-502 was introduced in 1975 and was immensely popular. It did suffer from two major flaws: a tendency to drift quite a lot and very coarse tuning requiring the fingers of a safecracker to tune in the desired signal.