VCO War Stories...? anyway... Until I replaced my vehicle Kenwood TK-880 & TK-780 radio stack last year with the current TK-8180 and TK-7180 radio... I ran my un-modified TK-880 into the 440-450 Amatuer Band.
But not all the way... the receiver sens fell off some and the vco didn't like going down to 440.100 without re-adjustment. In cold weather it would go out of vco lock and beep at me until the car heater had some time to warm it up a bit. On a positive note the same radio also worked up on my 493 T-Band frequencies without mods. I was happy to leave things alone since my Amateur work is mostly with a portable radio. The potential problem with the SM-50 is the receiver front in is not so great for repeater operation. Links maybe but maybe not so great in modest to high power repeater operation on a busy mountain top. But I have yet to try one at a busy mountain top... I'm also using Midlands and they make great link radios... and they are more than dirt cheap on ebay. cheers, skipp > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I am aware and have some that tune to the 420-470 band. And those radios are the TK-8180K2 radios. The other radios i am talking about are the TK-880K radios. You will need to modify the VCO if you want them to perform below 440mhz. I would prefer to use the Kenwood but the time it takes to modify and ge them to work there are a pain & i know them very well. The other hand you can get a small Motorola SM-50 and use the hacked software and they play very nice down to 430mhz and have for sometime. Nock on wood i have yet to replaced one in my link system and the audio and everything you want is on the 16pin connector. PTT,COR,TOR,GROUND,Muted & Unmuted Audio, Mic,13.8v etc. > > Mike > > -------------- Original message -------------- > From: "Jim B." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Mike Mullarkey wrote: > > They will work but the Motorola SM-50 radio works much better and you don't > > have to modify the VCO. > > What Kenwood radios do you need to modify the VCO on to get them to work > on the ham bands? Every Kenwood commercial rig I've played with since > the 705/805 series has gone right into the adjacent ham band with > virtually no effort. I know the current vintage mobiles and hand-helds > are actually spec'd to cover either 2M or 420-450 with no mods at all! > > -- > Jim Barbour > WD8CHL >
