Waterproof Hand-held

The Icom IC-M1V is designed to handle rough treatment, including saltwater submersion.

No question about it, a fixed-mount marine VHF radio can save your life. By definition, it also goes where your boat goes. That means if your boat sinks your radio sinks with it and becomes useless. You're out of luck when it comes to long-distance communication, unless you had the foresight to bring along a submersible or waterproof hand-held VHF radio.

Icom America makes a marine radio called the IC-M1V, which it touts as the "world's smallest waterproof hand-held marine radio." It measures a mere 2 1/16" (W) by 5 3/32" (H) by 1 3/16" (D), and weighs only 9.9 ounces. The unit's waterproof, non-corrosive construction is rated at JIS waterproof grade 7, which means it can be submerged to 1 meter (or approximately 3 feet) for up to 30 minutes.

The programmable IC-M1V puts out 5 watts of talk power and offers all 55 U.S., International and Canadian marine channels, plus 10 weather channels, and includes a weather alert function that will automatically notify you if the NOAA sends out a weather warning. Other features include an automatic channel 16/9 button that immediately recalls emergency channel 16 when pushed (channel 9 is a non-emergency hailing channel that is activated by pushing the button for two seconds).
Another handy feature is the Scan/Tag button that allows you to specify or tag channels you want included in the scan. When activated, it will scan the selected channels and stop at any channel carrying a transmission. The Dual and Tri-Watch monitoring ability is also a notable feature. When set to Dual Watch the unit will monitor emergency channel 16 while you use another channel of your choice for transmission. Tri-Watch adds call channel 9 to the monitoring process.

A feature I especially like is that the unit is equipped with a lithium ion battery instead of AA alkaline batteries or Ni-Cad. Anyone who has regularly used hand-held electronics knows that batteries are often the biggest hassle.

The benefits of a lithium ion battery are three-fold:

You don't have to fully discharge the battery before recharging it as you do with Ni-Cad to ensure good battery memory.

Lithium ion batteries store charges about three times longer than Ni-Cad. (Ni-Cad last longer than alkaline batteries.)

When in use, a lithium ion battery will last approximately twice as long as Ni-Cad, or about 12 to 14 hours based on the industry standard of 5/5/90 usage (5 percent transmit/5 percent receive/90 percent stand-by).

The unit also gives you the option of how much power you want to operate at by simply pushing the H/L button. High output is 5 watts, Low output is 1 watt, and Low 2 operates at a mere .5 watts, which is ideal for nearby communications.

Something else I find appealing with the IC-M1V is that its buttons are larger and easier to use and locate than many comparable models. Plus its large LCD screen with alphanumeric indications is easy to read.

The Icom IC-M1V lists for $463, but street prices are considerably less.

The standard unit includes: