I have had 4 Icom radios, three of which were IC706's: One original 706 and 2 MKIIG's. The MKIIG's have been in service for OVER 10 years in both mobile and base service without a blink. Icom makes good products and has for many, many years. I used to buy only Kenwood equipment, but I have had great service with Icom. ALL HF radios have failures and we, as customers, tend to see such failures as a harbinger of the failure of ALL of those products. This is NOT true. It's like saying ALL Ford cars are bad, and only Chevrolet is good. It is OPINION, and opinion ONLY. If Icom was so BAD, they would have been out of business eons ago, yet they remain one of the leaders in Amateur and commercial equipment. Indeed, they are usually in the forefront of innovation. Kenwood seems to have stopped in its tracks, it's last true innovation being when they stunned the HF world with its fine miniaturized TS-50. This was something that most of us prior to that time, accustomed to bulky HF radios, thought couldn't be done. Needless to say, I HAD to have one! Icom then took it a step further with the first all-in-on HF/VHF/UHF/scanning/general coverage rig and I was like WOW!!!! I had to have one of them, too! Icom sells LOTS of equipment to satisfied hams.
CWM
