How I Broke My IC-718's Screen

As I wrote about earlier today in my Field Report for my POTA Activation of Strouds Run State Park in Athens, Ohio, I broke my Icom IC-718's screen during a failed Parks on the Air Activation of Lake Logan State Park, US-1969. This post documents the day, the events leading up to what caused the damage, and lessons learned.

On April 18, 2024, I knew I wanted to get out and activate a new park. I had just activated the Wayne National Forrest, US-4521, the day prior as I'm currently chasing the Silver Activator Award for activating 20 unique parks. Lake Logan would have been my 14th unique park on Thursday. The morning started off very rainy and I wasn't too hopeful that I was going to be able to get out and go somewhere new, but thankfully the rain cleared out before noon and I decided that I would head to Lake Logan. I chose the park because of it's close proximity to US Route 33 and it would only be a 30 minute drive to the park from my home in Athens, Ohio.

I loaded up the car and had a very pleasant drive to the activation site that I had scoped out far in advance. I wanted to activate from the finishing peninsula on the east side of the lake, however, after I arrived I found it to be a hot spot for the warm afternoon. I kept driving northwest on Lake Logan Road and found the designated beach to have plenty of open picnic tables, but I missed the entrance and had to keep driving. In hindsight, this would be an ideal spot, besides for its close proximity to the road. I chose to keep driving and re-routed my GPS to the west side of the lake off of Blosser Road.

I arrived to the site and only found two cars in the rear of the parking lot, I chose to park near the entrance of the parking lot and to setup my antenna in the small patch of grass in between the west side of the parking lot and the nearby trees. The soil under the grass was waterlogged due to the rain that Southeast Ohio had seen earlier, but I managed to find a spot where my antenna would stay vertical. I deployed my antenna and window screen and ran the coax to my car. I was planning to activate from inside the passenger seat of my 2012 Hyundai Elantra like I did at East Fork State Park on March 15, 2024. However, I wanted to place my radio on my dashboard so it would be out of the way so I could log on my Evolve III Maestro, I found there to be just enough space if I angled it the right way and placed it on the flatter park in the center of the dash. I attached the coax to the radio and then had to exit the passengers side so I could connect my battery that I placed in the drivers side footwell to my radio. After that was connected I returned to the passengers side and opened the door. That's when disaster struck me and my trusty IC-718.

The radio falls straight down to the floor of the passengers side footwell, there was no time to even try to catch the radio to break its fall as the door wasn't even all the way open when it fell. After realizing what happened a feeling of grief washed over me, I knew that there was going to be damaged because it fell on the face of the radio. I was hoping that the screen was going to be fine because of the VFO knob and I figured that its where the impact would've been. The encoder that sits behind it has been flaky since I bought the radio in January so I wasn't too worried about it damaging the knob more than it already it. The first thing that I noticed is the the microphone connector on the radio had been bent and now faced over to the right at an angle, instead of facing straight ahead. Thankfully, this connector is the regular 8-pin Icom style and not an RJ-45 connector, so the connector on my HM-219 that I bought to replace the HM-4 that came with the rig was safe and sound. 

After seeing that I turned the radio so that the front panel would face me and that's when my grief became even more intense, the screen had cracked and the black liquid crystal was pooling near the impact point. I then tried to turn the radio on and it came to life! Just without being able to see anything on the screen. I attempted to key the microphone and it still transmitted and the fan was still spinning. My coax was still in tack and the cable didn't seem to be damaged and the Amphenol was still in great shape. Power cable was a similar story, it just got bent a little bit, but everything was still connected and nothing seemed out of place.

My theory as to how the radio fell down is that I didn't leave myself much slack in my feedline except for about a foot or so and I think that me opening the door had pulled on the coax and therefore the radio, making it fall down to the floor.

Due to the events that had just transpired, I decided to pack everything up and abandon the attempt, it just didn't seem worth it to me anymore and I wanted to identify a place to get a new IC-718 screen. After everything was packed away, I found that a seller on eBay had a screen, however it was in Taiwan. At this point my cell service started to die on me and I went and drove back to the exit I had taken to get to Lake Logan and parked in the Arby's parking lot that was close by. I had to disconnect my battery from my power meter on my battery box and place it back in my trunk as I had forgotten when packing up before leaving. Then I looked at the eBay listing closer and found that it had free shipping and would arrive sometime in early May. I decided to purchase the screen then and there because the seller only had 1 left and the only other place that I found to have them was from a seller on Alibaba for $10 each. However, the minimum order was 10 screen and I didn't feel like buying 10 of them and waiting even longer for shipping. 

After I returned home, I brought the IC-718 inside and started to disassemble the radio. I had done this once before when I wanted to look at the encoder for the VFO to see if there was anything noticeably wrong and also to get the part number for if I ever decide to get a new one. At the moment I'm not planning on it because they run about $120 which is about 1/4 of what I paid for the rig and the Apache 3800 case I store it in. I found the screen assembly on the IC-718 to be unique because of the LED arary that acts as the backlight and then I was confused on how any information was sent to the display from the controller chip as there were no noticeable contacts or PCB that connected the glass to the front panel PCB. It turns out that the contact point are along the top and bottom side of the display and that the pieces of white foam that hold the display in place and away from the PCB actually has a conductive material in the center. Very interesting! I also attempted to bend the section of metal that holds the mic connector and headphone jack that seemed to have been bent from the impact. However, nothing came of it besides for me breaking my trusty screwdriver that I've had since I was a youngster working on computers in my early teenaged years. The set thankfully has a smaller screwdriver that I could use to reassemble the radio.

Long story, but what are my take aways!

1. Leave more slack in your feedline. It's ok to get the car closer to the antenna so you have enough slack to work with. Or to reposition your gear to make it more conducive to the particular site. Be willing to change and work with the land/site.
2. Don't put the radio on the dashboard of the car! At the aforementioned activation of East Fork Lake, I didn't feel safe with the radio being on the dash, so I placed it in the drivers seat and up on the center console. Do this instead!
3. Don't be afraid to turn around when you see a good activation spot. I doubted myself when I found the beach area because it was a one way and it was close to the road, but I bet it would've been an amazing spot to activate from. While siting at a picnic table!
4. You can't plan for everything. There's a joke in a Parks and Recreation episode where Amy Poehler's character has a plan for if a meeting's location gets moved to a boat. That's not just something that you plan for and you can't plan for every possibility.
5. This hobby is expensive. Getting a new screen for an over 20 year old radio isn't something that every amateur radio operator needs to do on a daily basis. So when you do find that part and there's only one available, it's gonna cost you and take a while to get to you

TL:DR - Treat your gear carefully at all times, not just while in transit from your home to the park, you can't plan for every edge case scenario, and be willing to change!