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Project of the Month Program out-of-bounds frequencies into an Icom IC-41S handheld. |
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In the new Icom IC-41S handheld radio, transmit channels can only be programmed up to 480 MHz and can only be programmed wide band. The radio is a modified version of their commercial handheld radio, and although the commercial version could be programmed with CB frequencies, nobody is going to pay $800 for a CB radio. On the other hand, Icom doesn't want to sell their commercial radio cheaply, so what do they do? They nobble the radio of course. But in this case, the radio is only nobbled in the programming software, so with a little manipulation of the radio file, we can program frequencies up to 527 MHz. However, this hack will not be able to overcome the wideband-only limitation.
This hack will assume that you are using a windows installation. |
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Step 1
Write your radio program. Read your radio in and add the private channels you require. You will not be able to program transmit frequencies above 480 MHz, so program a unique frequency for the TX. For this example, let's say you want to program a RX frequency of 491.525 MHz, and TX frequency of 496.725 MHz. Program the RX frequency as above, and program the TX frequency as 479.995 MHz. If you have more than one out-of-bounds frequency, program the next channel with different TX frequency of, say, 479.895 MHz, and so on. When we hack the file we will need to be able to find all these frequencies, so they must be all different. Once you have finished, save the file and note the location of the saved file. For our example, let's say we saved the file as 'TEST.ICF'. |
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Step 2
Modify the file. Go to Explorer or My Computer and find the saved file. Open it with windows notepad. Rename the file to 'TEST.TXT' if you have to. You should see something that looks like this:-
Activate windows calculator. Click 'Start', the 'Run', then type in 'calc' and press return. Change the calculator View to 'scientific'. Enter the existing TX frequency you want to find, in hertz. So for our example we are looking for 479.995 MHz, so we enter 479995000 into the calculator. Now change the mode to 'HEX', directly under the calculator screen to the left. The calculator should show '1C9C2478' on the screen. Switch back to notepad, and click 'Edit', then 'Find', then enter the hex code from the calculator into the search box. You should come up with something like this, and I have highlighted it in red here:-
Now all you have to do is change this hex code to match the frequency that you want. Switch back to the calculator. Change the mode back to 'DEC', and enter the frequency you want, once again in hertz, so in our example we want to change it to 496.725 MHz, so we enter 496725000. Now change the mode to 'HEX'. You should now have 1D9B6C08 on the calculator screen. Switch back to notepad, and change the old hex code to the new hex code. Make sure not to change anything except the 8 characters. Save the file. Rename it back to 'TEST.ICF'. Open the IC-41S programming software and load the file. You should notice that the TX frequency has changed to the frequency you want. Now repeat the process for all the out-of-bounds channels that you want. Once you have finished, verify that the modified frequencies are correct, and program your radio. That's it ! |
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Final Notes
You will probably come across some hex codes that you cannot find in notepad. This happens when the hex code overlaps lines. If you cannot find the full hex code, try searching for the first four characters or the last four characters of the hex code. In the example below, I have highlighted the hex code we are looking for in red. Note that it does not continue at the start of the next line, because the first six characters of each line is the line number. I have highlighted the line numbers in blue. Once you have found it, verify that it is the hex code that you are looking for.
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