kenwood tm D710A

[211inthamag]

Well I forgot to post some what of a update..so far I have had the kenwood little over a week and so far I am VERY pleased with its performance and style! It matches up with my larsen 2/70B very nice! I have the green light labs double sided to the back of the face with auto trim double sided tape and the booger is on there! I am new to APRS and am kinda struggling with it since I don't have anyone in my area that I know of that can kinda give me some setup pointers! Back to the radio, I have the mic gain set on med and it seems to sound it's best to others and myself in that position....setting up this rig and programming it is really a peace of cake doing it manually if you have to. Again I'm very happy with the kenwood and the choice I made and would highly suggest it to others looking for a nice top of the line dual band rig!

 

[mkrochta]

I bought the same unit for aprs...question to you where did you put the main box. I'm trying to make so I can switch it out for two cars.

 

[W5LZ]

Just FWIW...
Kenwood makes a platform to mount both radio and control head to for the TS-480, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work for the '710 also. Everything on one 'chunk' sort of with a handle to carry the whole thing. Unfortunately they don't sell it in the USA.
I made one from plastic for the TS-480 and am thinking about making one for the '710 also. The main draw back is that it makes that 'chunk' rather large. Fine for portable stuff but no idea how you'd fit it into a car.
I also had the idea of being able to move the '710 from the car to the house (just one car). I have mine under the passenger's front seat with the head mounted on the dash. There's just the one control cable to 'un-string' so it wouldn't be too inconvenient. The mic cable I made an extension for so that's not a biggy. The absolute most important thing for me is labeling all the @#$ cables going to the radio (speakers, etc). It isn't the only radio in the car so it can get confusing very quickly, you know? I did that for a while but found a good deal on a TM-D71A! The '71 and '710 are exactly the same radio, just different control heads (TNC in the '710's). So, I don't have to move the radio anymore. All things considered, if I can find a more remote mounting location than under the seat I'm going to do some shifting of things around. There are a couple of storage places in the back of an HHR that would hold things, I think. The primary 'watch it' about doing that is cooling for the radio, there's no air circulation at all in those 'boxes'. So, ain't been done yet.
Aside from the 'whine/snivel/crying' about how hard I've got to do things, the important part in all this is that labeling of the @#$ cables! Do that! (It ain't the biggies, it's the little things that'll get you...)
- 'Doc

 

[s55db]

Here comes TM-D710G, with integrated GPS receiver

 

[211inthamag]

Well i guess i made a fast move..it happens!! I originally was going t omount the radoi under the back seat of my 4 door chevy BUT i made a mistake when ordering the radio, i thought the mic went in on the Face of the radio..not so..goes in the body of the radio instead.. SO, i mounted it on the B piller of my truck and mounted the face in front of the Center air vents~ looks real good and worked out very nice!

""QUICK QUESTION"" to those who own this rig! I can have the rig turned ON when my truck is not cranked..BUT when i go to crank my truck the radio re-turns itself on...is there a reason it does this? (both power and Neg are hooked into 6 Ga wires going right to the battery)

Is it because of the Voltage change when the truck cranks? IDK

 

[W5LZ]

You got it. If there's not enough power to run the radio it'll shut off.
And if you really want to mount that radio further away, check around for a connector used by the phone company to extend the cord (from the wall). Only 'catch' to that is that it has to have the right number of contacts, not all of them do. Same for the cord, telephone cord works just dandy. Or, Kenwood makes an extension for the mic (lots more expensive so got mine from Wall-Mart).
- 'Doc

 

[kf4mnc]

You can extend the mic cord by using an off the shelf cat 5 or cat 6 cable. That's what I did and everything works fine.

 

[W5LZ]

Just for grins 'cuz I don't know, are there 'double-female' connectors for cat5 cable? I'd think so but I've no experience with that stuff at all.
- 'Doc

 

[Streetglideok]

Yeah, I checked on BestBuy's web page one day and they sell them. Fairly inexpensive actually. I need to invest in one and some cat cable to remote mine.