Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve spend a decent amount of time in the shack, just not on the air. A couple of projects have been occupying my time:
Kenwood TKR-820 Repeater
This was a multi-step process including:
- purchasing the repeater and programmer on ebay
- getting the duplexers tuned to my coordinated pair (442.850+), thanks to Bill Akin, K9YDO for his help!
- adding an FCC compliant repeater controller (Ham Gadgets ID-O-Matic II)
- moving the repeater into the 70cm band which required both RX/TX VCO adjustments
After all that was completed, I’m glad to say that the NF9K repeater is currently on the air. Right now it’s just running from my house, while we find a better site for it.
EF Johnson 5100 Handheld
I’ve been playing around with the 33cm (900Mhz) band for a while now. See my page devoted to the band for various radio information. At any rate, I stumbled across a posting regarding an ebay seller that was selling the EF Johnson 5100 series, radio only, for $99. The catch was if you made him an offer for $40 he would accept. So I did and within a day or so I had a 5100 on the way. I’ve since purchased two more units. The nice thing about the 5100’s is that they use many Motorola XTS series accessories including batteries. After receiving the first unit, here are my observations:
- The unit as initially received could not be reliably programming using the 1.x series software. I had to upgrade the firmware and use the 2.x series in order to reliably program it.
- You can find the modified software out there to allow you to program the radio into the ham band, otherwise, you’ll need to do some hex editing of the binary files.
- Once I had the radio up and running, it sounded good, however, my TX audio was non-existent. I appears that the unit I currently have has a bad mic element. I understand that this was a signature issue with these radios for a while. So I’ll hope that the other two better. I’ve emailed the seller to see what our options are.
- Over all, I’m rather impressed with the radio. It’s big, but it’s solid. There are some really cool features, and it is front panel programming capable. I’ll post more info as I continue to play with these radios.
