Got me a Kenwood......

Yeah, no new shiny toys here.

Just beautiful old toys, (beauty is as they say very much in the eye of the beholder and I think she's a cracker!).


I received a gift from a very good old friend recently, with whom I haven't spoken to in years and thanks to my Ham licence, the 2m band and a bit of simplex playing we caught up with each other recently. Our QSO was nearly 30 miles apart with as little as 1 watt Simplex on my little Intek K980HP, (Baofeng UV5R copy), and a home-made wire dipole. The dipole was being held by me in the house.....Quite impressed with VHF!


Anyway, he turned up at my QTH with a box full of Radcom magazines and this little beauty placed on top.
(Socially distanced of course, essential supplies only )




An old Kenwood Trio TR-2500 HT. Lovely.


She's an old girl and the batteries were well past their prime, so I downloaded the service manual and got to work on her.

Turns out that apart from the internal lithium battery, (CR2032 memory backup), and the external cells in the battery pack she's in fine fettle. Bang on frequency and required no other adjustment whatsoever! Working perfectly on simplex frequencies with good audio out as well as receive and boy does she receive well. Much nicer than the modern Intek despite being a big girl in comparison

Still need to replace the old 1750 tone with a modern CTCSS so that I can fire up the local repeater. I used to be able to 'whistle up' the old 1750 but I'll let a little NE567 handle the 77Hz I need. 


This old girl has survived almost 40 years of history and hopefully thanks to my fettling she'll last a few years more.
Turns out my old friend has come across the original speaker/mic for her as well, look forward to marrying them back up.

What's the point?
Well if you have to ask you'll never get it. I'll smile every time I use her and I'm pretty sure my friend will knowing that she gained a good home.


Go on then, a shot with her clothes off.....



.....and required no 're-capping' whatsoever


All the best,
Victor

I remember spending an evening sitting on the flat roof of  a friends garage with one of those radios back in the very early 80's. At that time you could buy linears for handheld radios, that plugged between the radio & the antenna. 

At the time there were very few repeaters around & the Fenland repeater was a fair distance from us. We were close to Gainsborough, but from that roof, with a 5 watt linear, we could access the repeater.

Nice memory there Nick mate

These handies always remind me of wandering round 80's Ham rallies picking up a bargain or two. You'd just about spot them under the bulge of bellies ready to break the belt clip

Now I look just like one of those rotund Hams myself......ain't time a bitch!

Love it Victor, getting a new radio is absolutely Essential, you’ll never convince me otherwise. I wish I knew what I was looking at with her clothes off (yes, I’ve said that before!!) 

The rotund gentleman comment, well. As we say round here “I spat me brew”

Ha! Ha!

You're a star Paddy, gave me my smile to start the day off mate.

She'll do the job sat listening to GB3PI with a few memories to QSY simplex. Rather pleased with her

Quite happy to be the rotund Ham nowadays mate, probably never 'got it' all before. However I won't feel offended if someone says, "Ooh, I like your walkie-talkie".

Nice radio, Victor.

Cheers John.

Well chuffed with her.

Lovely looking radio-my first as an amateur was a TR2600-fond memories of working through GB3TW and GB3HG. Happy days!

Hi Mike,

I do love an older radio, especially if I can resurrect it.

Yeah, the TR 2600 with it's tiny, almost impossible to read S-meter! Weren't they just great.

The best pleasure I've yet experienced with this old girl was my old Ham friend turning up with the speaker mic for it. I pulled out the now working radio, let him plug the mic in and fired up my other radio to let him hear it working. That soft-squelch opened up and the FM reception was crystal clear in the only way an analogue receiver can be. He had a smile from ear to ear explaining how it was his first 'proper' radio after first being licenced........and exclaimed how pleased he was that it had gone to a good home.

That probably made the radio worth more to me than the sum of it's component parts.


Glad it bumped some memories for you Mike and thanks for posting, much appreciated.

All the best,
Victor

scropenoggin wrote:

Lovely looking radio-my first as an amateur was a TR2600-fond memories of working through GB3TW and GB3HG. Happy days!

Is that the mobile radio, that ran on 12 volts or  internal batteries & which had a telescopic antenna & a channel selector like a CB? If so I remember those, I had one, that ended up being put back in in box & sitting in my mothers loft until about 15 years ago.

Seasick wrote:

scropenoggin wrote:

Lovely looking radio-my first as an amateur was a TR2600-fond memories of working through GB3TW and GB3HG. Happy days!

Is that the mobile radio, that ran on 12 volts or  internal batteries & which had a telescopic antenna & a channel selector like a CB? If so I remember those, I had one, that ended up being put back in in box & sitting in my mothers loft until about 15 years ago.

No, that was the TR2300. Mine was a handy, similar to the one in the picture. I only sold it to fund an FT290, which was my dream radio for years. But I have very happy memories of making good contacts as a proud class B on simplex as well as through repeaters. Imagine my surprise in my first sporadic e season when LA9CHA called me through GB3TW!

Quote :

Imagine my surprise in my first sporadic e season when LA9CHA called me through GB3TW!

A little late for Loving Awareness & the engineers used NS (North Sea) via the repeaters. So that must have been Norway, so even better.  

I used to head up to Gateshead back in the late 70's. A friend lived not far from the town centre, near some flyovers. Five Bridges, are they, or where they called?