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Anybody use a Kenwood TM-V71A?
- Thread starter Captain Kilowatt
- Start date
OK getting ready to make an order soon. Just a question to the TM-D710G owners. It looks to me like the TM-D710G is basically a two piece radio. I mean that the control head does NOT normally connect to the main unit and is ALWAYS remote mounted and thus the connecting cable for that is included in the box along with the control head mounting unit. True? 
It does not matter to me as any radio I get for the truck will HAVE to be remote mounted and it is unlikely that it will be moved into the house as I have a 2m mono bander for that and since there are only about two 70cm repeaters within range of my house having 70cm in the house is a non-issue to me. I have the FT-857D if I REALLY feel the need to get on 70cm from the house.
It does not matter to me as any radio I get for the truck will HAVE to be remote mounted and it is unlikely that it will be moved into the house as I have a 2m mono bander for that and since there are only about two 70cm repeaters within range of my house having 70cm in the house is a non-issue to me. I have the FT-857D if I REALLY feel the need to get on 70cm from the house.
The manual that says it comes with the "modular plug cable" that is used to connect the control head. I don't have one, but would have no reason to believe it's not included.
That's what I see to however my question is if the control head must ALWAYS be remote mounted versus mounted directly onto the main unit.
Oh, I see. I didn't know if you had internet up there to download the manual.
I'll go sit in the corner now
I'll go sit in the corner now
The control head must be remotely mounted and can’t be mounted to the main unit...hence the reason I bought the TM-V71A instead
Oh don't worry. I will have internet access wherever I go so I will still be able to check the forum to see who is misbehaving.
I have other's helping me do that as well.
OK that's what I thought as well. Getting itchy to order something SOON and might just opt for the TM-D710G instead of the TM-V71A.
OK the deed has been done. After carefully looking at just how much use the radio will really get I just cannot justify the additional cost of the TM-D710G. It is a nice radio and looks impressive however looks are not everything. I just will not be doing any APRS stuff so it is just an unnecessary cost for me. I just placed an order with DX Engineering for the Kenwood TM-V71A along with the DFK-3DW detachable front panel kit and the RT Systems software and cable kit for programming the beast. It should be here by the first of next week.
Also for those interested, the unlock mod for this is trivially easy. So I backed up my radio with RT systems software and USB cable. Then I unplugged everything and took the lid off (bunch of screws, looks like #1 or close to it) and look on the left side of the radio you will see a captain obvious "please remove me" green wire jumper. Grab this with tweezers and hit the 2 pads with a decent soldering iron and remove it. I then used a wick to take the solder off the pads (but this isn't strictly necessary, lol) Then you will see two diodes below it. Remove the one closest to where you removed the green jumper from. I think this is "J1" or something. This is a little trickier but didn't take long, whole thing took 5 minutes. After you've removed the grain of sand, put the lid back on and all the screws. When you power the radio up it will reset itself and it's now unlocked. I then dumped my config back into the radio and back in business, then did a quick test on a MURS freq to see if it worked... bam, done.
I got one from a dealer that did the mod and it wouldn't cross and repeat after that. They said they never tested it after the mod for that specfically.
They took it and gave a swap for a non-modded one (made sure different SN)..
On that one I only unsoldered the green wire and got 'wide enough' with it and cross band still worked which is what I needed it for..
As posted here in 2012..
142-152 approx
420-450 approx
Getting GMRS would have been a nice bonus as I had that license to at the time but not having cross band was a no-go.
I'm guessing its some kind of firmware/revision issue, I just tested cband repeat in and out of the ham bands and its fine....
It's possible too they unlocked the radio some other way which botched the cband... you might want to check or post on mods.dk and see if anyone else has mentioned the issue.
It's possible too they unlocked the radio some other way which botched the cband... you might want to check or post on mods.dk and see if anyone else has mentioned the issue.