When I was out chasing fenders the other day I was trying to use the base set on the Destroyer (Icom IC-M402 into a Rib Raider antenna) the folks back in the office reported just being able to hear a loud hum rather like background engine noise when I was transmitting. I used the handheld to talk to our launch for the rest of the trip and that was fine so the prevailing conditions (a bit breezy and bloody rough) had nothing to do with it.
On further investigation the microphone seemed to have a bit of water in the diaphragm or at least a small amount of water came out the grille when I shook it and then banged it on my hand. I assume the mic is a waterproof item as the radio is supposed to be waterproof, but how susceptible are they to water ingress screwing up the audio? Having shaken out the mic, I was just talking to the office (from about a mile away parked at the house) and now it appears to work fine but I don't know if the problem could be that simple, or if there could be something else.
Would water inside a mic like that cause symptoms like that? I wondered if it might also have been interference from the engine but the receive is certainly fine when running and if you have alternator hum on my other VHF amateur sets, it normally comes through on receive as well. I can't really test it until next time I am out, if I run the engine on muffs whoever I am trying to talk to won't hear a damn thing anyway
Just wondering if anybody knew if this was a common problem - I would have thought the microphone grille would be designed to drain any water away when it was hanging in the normal position from the proper mic hanger, but maybe not? It hangs in the proper vertical orientation on the console so it didn't fill up because it was lying face up or anything.
Can you change the mic on these sets? The handbook makes no mention of it being removable and I can't immediately see how it is supposed to come off (maybe it isn't!)
Ta
