using kenwood Tk-715 on ham bands

[w5kub]

I recently purchased some new Kenwood TK-715 radios 16 channel, 25 watt, 216-280 radios. they are trunking radios but i have talked to kenwood and they say most all in not all trunking radios can be set up in conventional way. I want to program these to work in the ham 220 band. I have the software and ordered the programming cable. Does anyone have any experience which fields to program or have a simple document how to program them for the ham bands?
thanks, Tom W5KUB

[ka7wnf]

Tom you might be breaking new ground here. Good luck and post your findings if it works.

[n0oru]

I have two of these radios. If you remove the top cover, the speaker, and the speaker support spider, You will find a small jumper plug at the front of the circuit board marked set <-> use . Moving this jumper to the set position and powering up the radio will bring up 'test' on the display. Pressing CALL or ST will change the display to a 4 digit channel no. the channel or ID knob will now increment or decrement this channel no. A new radio will default to 12.5khz steps. Ch0001 will RX on 217.0125 and TX on 219.0125 and go up to CH0079 which will be RX at 217.9875 and TX at 219.9875 in this test mode. At least this is what mine does. I hope this helps. I did find a schematic for a programming cable on the internet but I have not found the programming software (KPS-41D I think) yet. Where did you find the software? Thanks! Steve N0ORU

[kd6cub]

is there any update on this? can these radios be programmed to work in the 220 Ham band?

[KV8OOA]

be a million of these for sale, at about 1/3 the price of store bought ham equipment. So, whats the word, any one know? Some say this is 220 Mhz, others say it is 147-174Mhz. Which is it?

[kd0ezq]

any update on this...

[tauseefrshad]

lways wanted one of these but they are so expensive. Mam had one years ago and when i asked to bring it to Cyprus she had given it away

kenwood pakistan

[g4wwk]

Hi Tom
http://f5jtz.free.fr/pjacquet/tk-715.htm (in French so run through google chrome translate into English)

Has converted the vhf 150-174MHz versions (Type T,X,E9) to 145MHz, by putting the radio into test mode and dumping the hex code
from the 27c256 plcc, which is hidden in a socket behind the display, and editing the hex code and blowing the new code into a fresh 27c256 plcc
( which is a blow only once prom)

Seems obvious that editing the same hex code with divide by n for 222MHz instead of 145MHz will do the trick

List of versions of TK715 by main board numbers:
X57-4240-50 = Type T3, 177-192 201-207Mhz, IF 34.4MHz (vco 3970-50) most common in the UK
x57-4240-51 = Type T, X, E9, 150-174MHz high band IF 34.4MHz

x57-4240-11 = Type K 10w, 217 -220Mhz, IF 30.3MHz
x57-4242-71 = Type E 15w, 223 -230Mhz
x57-4250-21 = Type N,M 25w, 254 -267Mhz

Service manual pdf at:
TK-715 Service manual.zip
https://www.mods.dk/manual.php?brand=kenwood

73's Steve G4WWK