The Radio Information Board

i'll look for it tomorrow.

thanks...

Paul

Remember the old MotherMoto single tone encoder function? It would generate a short (half to one-and-a-half second duration) audio tone of a specific frequency when a transmitter was first keyed up to allow access to a remote system. I work with a system that still requires such access modes, and am...

Thanks skipp... and splat When all the tools showed up and I was able to spend some time with the radio it does indeed seem to go into the UHF ham band quite easily. It even seems to stay within specification there! One question about the programming. The 380 HT had the ability to have the "own...

Thanks Splat, that's good to know. I just received my software and programming cable last Thursday, and will be playing... I mean working with the radio come Monday morning. I'll report on any idiosyncracies I stumble across.

Paul

Hi everyone. My company just started taking deliveries of the TK-3180 UHF handheld. I'm guessing we're getting these because the TK-380s aren't supported any more? Or perhaps the 3180 has a better feature set to mesh with our expanding systems? Or maybe there's some secret political reason, I don't ...

If by "field programmable" you mean with a laptop, as opposed to via the radio's own front panel controls, I would suggest the Kenwood TK-x30 series. They are no longer manufactured or supported by Kenwood, but are readily available on E-Bay and through commercial radio vendors. I maintain...

Try hanging up the microphone in a grounded hanger. Like ka7wnf alluded to, some radios are set up so that the scan featureee only works when the mic is on hook. You can disable that feature in software, but I don't have the software in front of me to give you step by step instructions on how to do ...

I don't know what firmware revision my radios have off the top of my head, but on my 630s I have to press and hold the [SCAN] button and then press the [OPT] button to get the CODE # to appear on the display. Give that a try and see if it helps you. Pressing the [OPT] button alone simply turns the [...

We removed from our fleet brand new Motorola Syntor X-9000 low band radios in favor of the Kenwood TK-630s and TK-690s. Our fleet (several hundred vehicles) is now completely Kenwood, and has been for several years. We are *very* happy with not only the performance of the TK-630 / 690 series mobiles...

I support a handful of these TKR-820s at my facility, they're good repeaters. K2HZ is right, for your money you'd be better off buying a high-gain vertical antenna and some good feedline. You can find many gain antennas that will outperform the 3dB a 50 watt amp will offer you over your transmitter'...

I had never seen the math for that before. Thanks!

Paul

I once modified a mid-cut (36-42 MHz) TK-630 to a high cut (42-50 MHz) as a favor to a friend. It took a bit of time and a lot of factory parts, some of them quite expensive, and in retrospect was a complete waste of time. If you've got one that isn't in the cut you desire, sell or trade it on E-Bay...

Up until Windoze XP I had always run my Kenwood software in a window, and never had any trouble with it. My HP laptop, the one I have to use the USB-to-serial adapter on, has all sorts of trouble with the Kenwood software, yet my IBM T-30 (which has a built-in db9 serial port) has no trouble at all ...

Interesting... I've had miserable results with a similar scanario using a SIIG (nine pin) USB-serial adapter and my HP Pavilion running Windoze XP. I've tried programming X30 and X90 series mobiles, the 880 mobile, and the 380 portables with this setup using factory software and cables to no good re...

Regards 440 operations the 880 *may* work in the high end of the amateur band, but don't count on it. I've got one in my service truck with some ham frequencies programmed in it, the one's that transmit below about 446.5 don't work. I haven't had the time to attempt a retune. As to the programming, ...