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Kenwood tm241a issues

Skyler

New Member
Feb 2, 2014
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I just got a used Kenwood tm241a.
It was working fine on my friends antenna until I took it home and hooked it up to a used Larsen nla-mm antenna I bought at a ham-fest.

It seemed to work fine on that antenna for a bit until I was hearing a weird hum out of the speaker on the higher edge of the 2 meter band on 50 watts. My Baofeng handheld picked up all of this spurious emissions on any frequency I tuned to.

I then decided to test it one more time with a friend on a repeater, and it transmitted this weird one-tone beep when I keyed up the microphone, and didn't stop when I unkeyed it, the transmitting stopped only when I unplugged the microphone, rebooted the radio, and plugged the mic back in. The beep pitch changed by pressing different buttons on the mic, but wasn't the familiar two-tone DTMF, and was a one-tone beeping.

Is this radio fried, or is there a way to fix it? Does the DTMF mic possibly have a problem, or is it most likely an internal radio issue? The day I finally got a nice 50 watt radio for my net control, and the courage classic bike race, It burned out. I cant see a nice kenwood die, and as a cheapo high school student, cant afford a new radio {Cry_river} {Cry_river}

73
KDØWHB
 

The single tone your hearing, is it possible the 1,750 Hz tone burst? Unless you're in Europe I'd turn that off. This is the American version of the radio, right?
I bought a TM-241A brand new back in 1993 for $300. Everyone told me how great a price that was. The radio had a button that always stuck which was fixed under warranty. The display went haywire and I fixed that myself by cleaning, wiggling, and tightening an internal connector. It had a third problem I was just living with. I sold it in less than a year.
My only other experience with a Kenwood has been a TS-2000. It's been to the shop twice in 2 years and needs to go again.
I'm so done with anything Kenwood related.
 
My experience is that any 2m rig from that era is a gamble regardless of the brand. Except for the Radio shack rigs I avoid old 2/440 mobile rigs like the plague.
 
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I fixed it. The mic was a bad mic, and the 12 volt SLA battery was low, explaining the weird noises on fifty watts! Now the question is, where can I find a cheap compatible DTMF mic?
 
I fixed it. The mic was a bad mic, and the 12 volt SLA battery was low, explaining the weird noises on fifty watts! Now the question is, where can I find a cheap compatible DTMF mic?


That will do it. You should have mentioned you were on an SLA battery and not a power supply. A battery won't last too long with 50 watts out and all kinds of weird things can happen then.
 
That will do it. You should have mentioned you were on an SLA battery and not a power supply. A battery won't last too long with 50 watts out and all kinds of weird things can happen then.

Yeah, I kinda still have to find a good power supply. I don't do my 50 watts that long, and my battery is not horrible, it is 17 amp hours.

I looked on e-bay and the only microphones for that radio didn't have DTMF. Does anyone have any links to a mic that does have DTMF and is compatable with the 8-pin connector?
KenMic-Jack-8.gif
 

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