By MikeNZ.....

 

This radio certainly got me off to a good start with the basics of Ham Radio as it allowed me access to not only all of the "local" ham repeaters, but also simplex operation Club Net on 144.600 MHz.

 

Although I've only ever used mine as a base set, it was obviously designed to be installed in a motor vehicle, with it's compact size (65H x 235W x 242D) and easy to use controls.

 

 

 

As was common at the time, this set is very solidly built with 2mm thick steel making up the outer case panels and very little plastic, it weighs in at 2.3kg without the microphone.

 

It has to be said that a transciever such as this model would make the ideal beginners rig.

Look, it has to be one of the easiest radio's to program that I have ever seen, sure it might only have 10 memories in it, but in some places, that's all you really need.

What used to catch me out with this radio more than anything when I first started using it was the Split/Simplex switch next to the microphone socket, I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to get into a repeater here with the radio set to Simplex mode or have tried to talk to someone around town here with the set on +600kHz.

 

Some of the radio's other features are:

 

* It will transmit/recieve anywhere within 144.100 and 149.995 MHz (in 5kHz or 12.5 KHz steps).

* It has 2 power settings- Low (3W) and High (25W).

* Comes with 10 memory channels that are divided into 2 groups of 5 (A1,A2,A3,A4,A5,B1,B2,B3,B4,B5).

* Memory is protected by a back-up battery.

* Has ± 600kHz split/Simplex control for use with repeaters and local QSO's.

* This radio has a rather strange band scanning set-up, it can be set to stop scanning if it comes across an active frequency or if it comes across an un-used frequency. I would imagine the last feature would be very handy in places where you can't get a word in edge-ways on the repeaters.

 

* Cross-channel operation is made possible by the use of the "AxB" mode, this means that the radio will transmit on the frequency programmed into Channel A1 and will recieve on the frequency programmed into Channel B1 or A2/B2, etc. I have an idea that this is for using the radio with repeaters with weird splits, although I've only ever heard of 600kHz used with the 2 metre band.

 

 

 

 

However, this radio is not without it's down-side.

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For a start, it doesn't have CTCSS (Tone-coded Squelch), mind you that is pretty much understandable, I don't think CTCSS was around in the days when this radio was new.

But, when 3 of our local repeaters went the way of CTCSS, due to interference, from one place or the other, this more or less meant that the KDK got relegated to the task of local contacts on simplex and that's about it. Having said that, this radio does have a strange tone switch on the front panel, I've read the manual a few times and as far as I can make out, if you change a DIP switch inside the radio, and you have the switch on the front set to Tone, the radio will emit a 100 Hz tone for 0.5sec when the PTT switch is first pressed. I still haven't worked out to this day, what you would use such a low frequency (and of such short duration) for.

 

The audio level that this radio transmits is somewhat lower than most other radios I've seen, even to the extent of being asked to "talk louder" during QSO's. I've even tried adjusting the microphone amplifier gain, but that just ended up with it distorting all over the place.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a big issue in my opinion, in fact the signal that does come out of this radio is probably the "cleanest" of all of the radio's I own, it's just that it's a wee bit hard to hear at the other end.

 

Considering the length of time this radio has been in my possession (and it was 2nd-hand when I bought it) it's been been very well behaved and apart from a blown fuse (which was actually my fault to start off with) and the meter lamp failing last year some time, I've had no really big break-downs with this set.

I opened it up about 6 months ago and re-aligned the reciever section, checked the calibration of the local oscillator, checked the output power and modulation level, everything was where it should have been.

 

 

 

 

As you might have noticed in the first picture, the lighting behind the S/RF meter doesn't look that "original" and in hindsight, it probably should have been red, to match the frequency read-out. I had a go at upgrading the lighting with a couple of LEDs, after the original grain of wheat lamp failed, unfortunately, I got the wrong LED's and used "ultra-bright" ones instead of the lower power ones I had intended to install, I nearly fell off my chair when I first switched the radio on after the "repair".

Oh well, I'll just have to put that one down to experience.

 

 

 

 

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the way this radio has perfomed over the years I've owned it and to be honest it hasn't really missed a beat from the day I started using it. It's been the easiest radio I've ever had to set-up and it doesn't even seem to mind the odd "experimental" aerial connected to it either on the low power setting.

I'm really glad in hind-sight I bought this radio.

 

(Scanning Tasmania would like to thank Mike for this review)