Kenwood TR-2600A and MDC

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WC4RAV
Posts: 42
Joined: Wed May 05, 2004 2:59 am
Location: Atlanta, GA

Kenwood TR-2600A and MDC

Post by WC4RAV »

I recently acquired a Kenwood TR-2600A 2 meter HT from the early 80's. The radio has a unique feature they call "DCS" which stands for digital selective calling. It sounds alot like MDC, and the data format is similar in nature. My Visar and HT1000 even activate their data operated squelch when they hear the DCS from the Kenwood. Has anyone out there played with this feature? Sadly it didn't go anywhere. I guess it was ahead of it's time. Kinda makes you think, this radio came out "way back" in 1984 when MDC itself was still relatively new. Yet here was Kenwood, a lowly ham radio company with a digital sel-call system built into a field programmable portable. Back in 84, the idea of a field programmable with sel-call capability wasn't heard of from those boys in Schaumberg...the Saber and Genesis radios will still on the drawing board...and the top selling radio for them was the crystal controlled HT-90/440...

there is a call sign display unit you could buy called a CD-10 and it would display the call sign of the person transmitting (DCS sends both your call sign in ASCII format and your chosen DCS "unit ID" everytime you transmit) and allow for "selcall" squelch where your radio would only sound when a desired station called you. It still amazes me as this type of signalling was still a few years away from the LMR world.

anyway it is good to get on the air with this thing. it sounds very "mellow" and everyone accuses me of using my Motorolas with the "cop sounds" yet they get dumbfounded when I tell them "no, this is a 20 year old Kenwood HAM HT".
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