A while back I bought a second hand radio: the Kenwood TM-742E. A great radio with 2m, 70cm and 23cm module!
The man who sold it is a heavy smoker, so I had to clean the rig intensively. But after doing a good job the radio is like brand new. No scratch on it.
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Did a lot of work the other night at the 23cm trx. Build in the speaker (drilled a lot of holes!) and did the last mod to do more filtering in the VCO voltage. Also fixed the phantom power for the electret microphone. Modulation and LF-sound are now in an acceptable range. There is always room for improvement, but at least I can leave this little puppy running in the background without scaring up every time some one opens the repeater.
Now I have my ‘reference rig’ I found out the filtering of the 23cm TRX is indeed under average. The reference rig can easily hear repeaters from miles away and doesn’t have a S6 to S7 noise without an signal. I think the UMTS-antenna that is about 50 meters away must have something to do with this. I think the next to do for this trx is building a bandpass filter.
When trying to improve my 23cm trx I was in desperate need of a reference 23cm rig. I need something that just works and can make a little more power then 400mW. Asking around gave me a Kenwood TM-531E for borrowing. I fell a little in love with this little puppy. On a local eBay-like site I spotted the 2meter brother of the TM-531E: the TM-241E. Actually it is one type newer (the same line should be the TM-231) but they look almost the same. I ordered this puppy, so hopefully (if everything goes well) I can hang him besides his 23cm sister in a few days.
Maybe one of these days I’ll spot the 70cm model too (TM-431E/441E). Who knows I’ll buy that one too 🙂
