Originally Posted by
Maoraigh1
The range of the new 8.33 Icom is much less than the 1991 one.
I found the same when replacing my reliable old IC A-20 with a new 8.33 IC A6. Range with the former was easily 15+ miles, with the latter I struggled to make myself understood at my home-base ATZ boundary, and even in the overhead at a local airstrip. I called those helpful people at Icom, they advised me my ancient intercom was incompatible with the new radio. New intercom, range back to 15+ miles. Just a thought.
I use the handheld as the only radio in my airplane, and have done for 19 years. I recently flew another airplane where the panel-radio battery died and I had to use my handheld with no headset (no adaptor to hand); utterly hopeless, I couldn't hear a thing above the cabin noise, even at idle on the ground. I would certainly recommend if you keep a standby handheld available, have a headset adaptor plugged in to it already - it's really not much of a faff to change the headset over. You may need a separate PTT as well though, as the adaptor seems to disable the transmit button on the radio.