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Kenwood Land Mobile Radio Notes Compiled, HTML'd and maintained by Mike Morris WA6ILQ

This page is very dated and your author / page maintainer has very little personal knowledge of Kenwood equipment beyond what he had to research as part of a project or projects.

If anyone who is familiar with the Kenwood product line would like to contribute to this page please contact the page maintainer.

What we have now:

Here is some general information on Kenwood model numbers courtesy of Gene Hornung WBØPKP:

Portables:

TK-100's	Low band portables (30 to 50 MHz)
TK-200's	Hi band portables (150 to 174 MHz)
TK-300's	UHF portables (400-470 MHz, 450-470 MHz, 450-512 MHz, varies with the model)
TK-4x0's	800 MHz portables
TK-4x1's	900 MHz portables

Mobiles:

TM-4x0's	800 MHz mobiles
TM-4x1's	900 MHz mobiles
TK-6xx's	Low band mobile
TK-7xx's	High band mobile
TK-8xx's	UHF mobile
TK-9x0's	800 MHz mobiles
TK-9x1's	900 MHz mobiles

These are all programmable radios. The x01S and x20 require special programming boxes and use a PROM or EPROM. The x05 and x05D (has scan) are front panel or computer programmable. All others require software and cables. Most of these radios will go into the ham bands with some retuning if the software will accept the data.

The KPG-4 is a programming cable for mobile radios like the TK-740 and TK-880 that use MS-DOS programming software. It has a 9-pin "D" connector to plug into the computer and a 6-pin telephone style connector for the microphone jack. The KPG-46 programming cable has an 8-pin plug for the microphone jack (like the one used on Ethernet cables). The plastic locking tab will center the 6-pin cable in the 8-pin radio and it will work until the plastic tab breaks then it becomes a annoyance as you repeatedly have to find the sweet spot where the cable works. Yes, this is the voice of experience.
You can make your own programming adapter from information on these pages (and I saw a nice one with a 9-pin "D" connector on one side of a box and both 6-pin (telephone) and 8-pin (ethernet) jacks on the other side) but your page maintainer finally resolved the homebrew cable and KPG-4 versus KPG-46 issue by purchasing one each KPG-4 (9-pin "D" connector) and KPG-46 (USB FTDI) cables from Mark Dunkle at https://bluemax49ers.com. He has a direct sales web page so that you can avoid the eBay markup. No, he's NOT paying me for providing this pointer. His cables just plain work.

Repeaters:

Model	Band	Mounting	Power
TKR-720	High band	see text below	100% duty cycle at 15w, 50% at 50w
TKR-820	UHF	see text below	100% duty cycle at 5w, 50% at 20w
TKR-730	High band	single height	Anybody have this information ?
TKR-830	UHF	single height	Anybody have this information ?
TKR-750	High band	double height	100% duty cycle at 25w, 50% at 50w
TKR-850	UHF	double height	100% duty cycle at 25w, 50% at 40w

The TKR-720 and TKR-820 repeaters were the earlier models and are reliable and easy to use. They have a built-in power supply. They are desktop repeaters, dimensions are 5" H x 13" W x 15" D and while they are a tabletop design there are rack mount brackets available. The power adjustment is by a pot on the TX board. An extra fan will help. They do require a programming box or interface cable and software.
Update: There is an article by Matt Krick K3MK on the Kenwood repeater page on brute force hacking the TKR-720 / TKR-820 Series Repeaters.

The TKR-750 and TKR-850 are rack mount units and have a built-in temperature controlled fan on the heat sink. The internal controller is more capable than that in the 720/820 series and can be programmed by a PC. Basically you configure it with your RX and TX frequencies and the PL tone frequency. If you are using an external controller you set it to "duplex base" mode, with COR on Aux out #1 and TOR (tone decode) on Aux out #2. Power control is also set by the software. They are multichannel capable. One nice thing you can do is have different Morse code identifiers for each channel, and set it up to change channels when the main supply fails and it switches to backup power. The second channel is programmed identical to the first but with something extra in the ID message to tell you you're on backup power.

DE Gene WBØPKP

Comments from email threads on the repeater-builder Yahoo! Group:

• Some radios need the KPT-40 programmer. Here's the manual, 4.13 MB PDF file
• Some of the Kenwood model numbers have an embedded bandsplit indicator. For example, the TM-760G-1 model covers 148-174 and the TM-760G-2 covers 136-162 MHz. Be sure you are buying the proper radio for your needs.
• Since the commercial UHF allocation in most of the world is 440-470 MHz all the Kenwood UHF repeaters are designed to cover that range. This makes moving a recent Kenwood to the 440-450 MHz repeater section of the USA amateur band a snap - just program them for the new frequencies and retune the RF stages (they come from the factory pretuned (and stagger-tuned at that) in the 460 MHz region). The oldest ones are iffy - you will have to try it and see if it works. First measure the performace on the existing commercial frequencies, then program both RX and TX for 455.0, then tune, measure and compare, then program the RX and TX for 450.0 and tune, measure, and compare, then 449.0 and tune, measure, and compare, then 448.0, then 447.0, then 446.0 and repeat all the way to 440.0. You will soon figure out at which point which stages are refusing to tune, and you can fix it. Then program it for your channel and peak it.
• The TKR-750K version is designed for 146-174 MHz, while the TKR-750K2 version is designed for 136-150 MHz. Note that there is no official "K1" version, despite the fact that some folks call it that. It is simply "K".
  If you are planning on buying a new or second-hand TKR-750 for use as a 2m or MARS repeater then specify the 136-150 MHz K2 version when you order it, even if you are going to be using a 147 MHz pair. You never know, you may have to move it to a 145 MHz pair someday. And the resale value will be a lot higher.
• The early version TKR-750K and TKR-850K repeaters take the KPG-66D software. The later-model K2 repeater takes KPG-91D software. The software does not interchange between repeater models / versions. Many folks confuse the K versus K2 suffix for determining whether or not a specific TKR-750 or 850 is a Version 2 or not. And to be precise, there is no such thing as a "Version 1", only a "pre Version 2". But regardless, the K suffix has nothing to do with that determination. The easiest way to ID a Version 2 from a pre Version 2 is either by serial number as the version 2 units have a serial number that is later than 508xxxxxxxx. There is one trick that works as long as the sticker is still there: Version 2 units will have a sticker under the Kenwood logo that says either "VHF FM Repeater TKR-750" or "UHF FM Repeater TKR-850".

Kenwood's first synthesized repeater was the TKR-720 (high band) and TKR-820 (UHF) then the TKR-620 (low band), and requires either a KPT-20 or KPT-50 hardware programmer. Both programmers plug into a connector inside behind the front panel - NOT the microphone jack.

The TKR-720 and TKR-820 have a minimal internal controller that can be disabled by connecting pin 1 of the accessory connector to ground (pin 11), and at that point other pins become COR, repeat audio out, PTT, repeat audio in, etc. More details in the "Some notes on interfacing the Kenwood TKR-720 and TKR-820 repeaters" article below.

Click here for the KPT-20 Instruction Manual. The KPT-50 is a second generation version of the KPT-20.

There is a software package for the KPT-50. There is also an article on how to bit-hack the TKR-720 or TKR-820 below.     Click here for the KPT-50 manual
Click here for four photos of a KPT-50 courtesy of Gary "JR" Sutton:   Photo 1   Photo 2   Photo 3   Photo 4  

Contact Information:

The author can be contacted at: his-callsign // at // repeater-builder // dot // com.

Information provided from various sources as listed in the text.
Hand-coded HTML © Copyright date of last edit by Mike Morris WA6ILQ.

This page split from the main index page 16-Nov-2011.

This web page, this web site, the information presented in and on its pages and in these modifications and conversions is © Copyrighted 1995 and (date of last update) by Kevin Custer W3KKC and multiple originating authors. All Rights Reserved, including that of paper and web publication elsewhere.