The following warnings occurred: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Warning [2] Undefined array key "lockoutexpiry" - Line: 94 - File: global.php PHP 8.2.26 (Linux)
|
Kenwood TM-281A, Mono-band, 2 Meter - Printable Version +- Upper Peninsula Ham Radio Forums (https://uphams.net) +-- Forum: Operation (https://uphams.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=3) +--- Forum: Radios, RX, TX, Transceivers, Peripherals, Love 'em or Hate 'em, REVIEWS (https://uphams.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=45) +--- Thread: Kenwood TM-281A, Mono-band, 2 Meter (/showthread.php?tid=17) |
Kenwood TM-281A, Mono-band, 2 Meter - N8ZED - 01-19-2017 I helped a friend with selection of a new radio and initial programming. I did a fair amount of research a month or two earlier when I upgraded my old dual band Yeasu FT-8500 to a Kenwood TM-V71A. While doing the research I was impressed with the specs and the price of the TM-281A. $133 from http://www.mtcradio.com/kenwood-1/ Some of the things I liked about the 281 were the lack of an often confusing array of buttons to learn, power settings of 25 and 65 watts (a third power setting of 5 or 10 watts would have been nice). Something I really appreciated from the get go was the passive cooling, NO annoying FAN noise! There were some mic and radio front buttons that could be custom programmed and I changed one mic button to go to direct frequency keypad entry to make that access handy. I reprogrammed another mic button to toggle between power settings. Actual programming from the radio wasn't too bad but I found I'd made several mistakes by losing the order of programming steps on a few channels. I can't say I've found a radio yet that I really enjoy programming from the radio. Especially if you have different radios and all the programming steps are different and not intuitive. My errors showed up when I brought the programming up on a computer. From the computer, fixing the errors and adding a couple more channels was a breeze. In service, the radio gets pretty high marks. Easy to operate, quiet, plenty of power, receive and transmit audio reports have been excellent and the price is great. The price of $133 reflects a $25 Kenwood Promo I may post more in the programming section when I get some time. And I wrote a 3 page "quick start guide" for this radio too that I will post. Happy TX'ing! |