Icom R-7000 vs. R-7100

These originally were made for NSA out of Fort Meade. They did the integraton usually, but sometimes the contractor did.

We sold the ICOM receivers. R7000 and R71 as you mention, later adapted under protest to the R7100 which was a piece of junk and the R72, later adapted to the R8500 until ICOM and us got divorced 3 years ago, then the Fort switched over to W-J. They no longer buy or use ICOM equipment, and in fact have replaced most of what they had. They are the source of the ragged out R7000s, R71 and R7100 you see surplus and on ebay.

The signal monitors were Atlantic Electronics SM-7071, sold by CSE Associates www.cse-assoc.com. Rack frames were built by a machine shop for us and CSE, later knocked off at much lower quality by EEB, out of business now since the owner got locked up.

The DF was usually ours, sometimes Tech Comm, sometimes OAR (now Cubic) -- whatever was available in the quantities they needed at the time. We all worked together to fill their orders, as there was plenty of work to go around and someone we help this week will bail us out next week. The industry used to be a lot friendlier than it is now.

They would buy tons, and I literally mean tons, of this stuff. I paid the freight bills. Sometimes UPS would bring the stuff early in the morning, we'd spend all day pasting labels on the unopened boxes, and UPS would haul them away later in the afternoon the same day. At times there were too many boxes to fit in the building, and we'd be taping contract labels onto the boxes on the lawn in front of the building hoping afternoon UPS would get here ahead of the rain. We built temporary furniture and workbenches out of ICOM receiver boxes waiting for some accessory to come in so we could ship.

These kits left the country on intel missions and had an average life of six weeks.

Those were the good old days.

The Fort bought ICOM because they were cheap enough to be throwaway receivers, not because they were anything special in terms of quality or performance. They were and still are adequate for basic receivers, except for the fortunately short-lived R7100 and R9000 which are not worth the gas it takes to haul them to the dump. Same is true for the LCD R9000 out now. Stay away from any of those.

The venerable R7000 and the current R8500 are the best of the lot.

This piece Jim has must have been one used as a test bed. The particular pieces of equipment date that thing to about ten years ago.