TM-741: First Impressions by Fred Lloyd, AA7BQ Despite my better judgement, I up and sold my trustworthy TM-721 and took the plunge on Kenwood's latest offering, the TM-741. Although I've only had the radio for two days, I've been studying it for several weeks and have put together the following opinion about it. I bought the basic radio, the CTCSS Decode option, the DTSS option and the short (4 Meter) control head extension kit. Cost was just over $900. Additonal band units for one of 10M, 6M, 1.25m and 23CM (that's 28, 50, 220 and 1296 MHz) run between $250 and $350 each. The supplied 440 unit may be removed and replaced with another band. Control Features The black on white (kind of orange, actually) display is very readable under all lighting conditions. I'm told that there is a black display with colored letters but it is only available in Japan, where it is the preferred type (I guess they are night people over there :-). Kenwood finally woke up and smelled the coffee by illuminating the control buttons - albeit dimly and with very small letters (I'm slowly getting farsighted :-). For as much as this radio does, it has surprisingly few buttons. Thats because most buttons have three functions, and some have more depending on the context in which they're used. Kenwood was wise to include a handy little quick reference card, which I presently depend on. There is the ubiquitous F (function) button which gives many keys additional meaning. It is used in a variety of ways. For example, depending on the function you might press F, followed by another key, or hold F down for 1 second until the buttons begin to flash and then press another key, or hold F down and simultaneously press another key, or hold F down and another key down while turning on the power. Some buttons are hidden. For example, to change transmit bands, you press in on the volume knob for that band. For those that have seen pictures of the rig, you'll recall that there are three multicolor reg/green LED's in a row above the volume knobs. These LED's are also buttons which are called Control Select buttons. When you press a Control Select key, the front panel controls now operate on the indicated band, while the selected band for transmit stays the same. I find this very handy since it means I can continue my QSO while fiddling with another band. Scanning is available on both bands simultaneously and with a wide variety of options. You can scan through memory channels, groups of memory channels, the call channel, the last used VFO frequency, the last used memory channel. There are three or four ways to initiate scanning, and surprisingly, no SCAN button anywhere. In general, to begin scanning, you press and hold either a Control Select button, the VFO button, the MR button or the CALL button or one of the similar buttons on the microphone. Each method initiates a different type of scan. Scan resume may be either time operated or carrier operated. I've not seen a mobile radio with as much memory before (except the 941, which I have not owned). There are 100 regular memory channels per band, plus a CALL channel. Any channel may hold an odd split (finally, Kenwood!), and the VFO band scan limits no longer use regular memory channels (finally, Kenwood!). I now enjoy having every repeater in the state programmed into my radio, and it is handy since I drive around the back country quite a bit. One odd attribute about the main control knob is that when you change memory channels from, say, 55 to 1 where there are no channels programmed between 56 and 99, there is a slight delay. Presumably the mpu is doing something as it jumps across these unused channels. The delay gives rise to an odd feeling when you've only got a couple of memories programmed and the rest are all empty (and blanked out). I wish there was a way to directly key in the memory channel number you wanted, because it can take several turns of the knob to traverse 40 or 50 channels. Although my DTSS module is still on backorder, the manual indicates that I can use it to directly enter the VFO frequencies with the microphone keys. I don't recall that it will allow you to direct key the memory channel numbers. The radio also includes a time-of-day clock/calendar/stopwatch. I like the clock but I find the stopwatch particularly cumbersome to use and overall nothing more than a trivial toy. I had hoped that it could do something useful like time my transmissions (to beat the repeater's alligator) but no such luck. It's no more useful than the one on your digital watch. The clock does, however function to automatically turn the radio ON or OFF at predetermined times, and has a built-in timeout timer for the cross-band repeater function (or any other purpose). Button beep volume is adjustable (in 8 steps) as is the display brightness (in 4 steps). In my rig, there is no discernible difference between brightness levels 1 and 2, but 3 and 4 are noticeably and progressively darker. My last late model Kenwood (a TM-241) did show a difference between brightness levels 1 and 2. Speaking of beeps, the rig sometimes plays a stupid tune when I press the DTSS button. Maybe it's singing "La De Da, the DTSS isn't installed yet you dummy..." :-). On the positive side, different functions have different beeps so you don't have to look at the display. For example, switching to UHF transmit gives a high pitched beep, and switching to VHF gives a low one. On The Air A salesman warned me that the receivers were not as "tight" as the '721's and sure enough, there is a noticeable increase in around town intermod junk. Sometimes it gets pretty bad and I'm glad that I'm getting the CTCSS decoder to help prevent it. Overall sensitivity and sound quality is as good as any, and the micro-miniature built-in speaker does a remarkable job for it's size. Almost everyone will use an external speaker, however, since it improves the receiver volume tremendously. There are three speaker jacks (or four is you buy an additional band unit). There's one at the rear of each band unit, and one near the front of the rig. The front jack (which I use) comes off the internal speaker and is a mixture of all bands. I miss not being able to switch off the second band as easily as I did in the '721, which was a one-button (DUAL) press. On the '741, you must first press and hold the 'F' key until the buttons flash, and then punch the band switch you wish to disable (or enable). This takes much more time and thought, which I don't have a lot of when I'm busy driving in city traffic. It's quicker to just turn the volume down on the band you want rid of. I also miss the single volume control that the 721 had. Now I have two knobs, plus a third which does nothing, to contend with. More cockpit confusion, however, it's manageable. On air signal reports have ranged from "outstanding" to "sounds a little hollow" (probably some sour grapes there :-). Overall, transmit audio seems right up to par with the rest of the pack. The radio has a fan which comes on whenever you transmit (at any power) and stays on for a few minutes afterward. It appears to be time operated instead of temperature operated as one might expect. At any rate, it's very quiet. Accessories A couple of nits to pick here. First, for a $750 radio, I expect CTCSS Decode and DTSS to be BUILT IN! Dammit, they can do it on a $500 handheld, why not on a top-of-the-line mobile!!! These two 'goodies' jacked the price up another $75. I consider them both essential. The DTSS gives you several things besides DTMF paging, such as a 10 number/15 digit autodialer and the ability to key in frequencies from the keypad. CTCSS is really a good idea when (if) you decide to use the cross-band repeat, and as mentioned above, to prevent intermod receive problems. The front panel extension kits are OK, but are misrepresented by Kenwood. Firstly, the "short" kit is advertised as being 13 feet long - so I bought it. Come to find out, only the display cable is 13 feet long, the microphone extension is only 6 feet in length - so BEWARE. They're also very expensive. The "short" kit is about $45 and the long kit is around $70. Pretty expensive wire.... There is some good news in that the control head cable only contains 4 wires and could be easily extended by the user. The microphone cable is one of the 8 conductor telephone-type RJ45 or whatever and would be harder, but not impossible, to extend. But what's the point? You have to buy one of the kits to get the modesty panel that fits over the hole left by the display panel. At least ICOM for one, didn't have this requirement. Installation Oh boy, a remote head radio.... Sure. I've got a new vehicle and despite it's sport utility status (a Ford Explorer), you pay hell trying to find a place to mount anything in it. I finally ended up sacrificing some of the rear passenger's foot room by installing it under the rear of the front passenger's seat. I'm planning on placing a little mat over it to keep the rear seat passenger's feet off of it. Well, at least it can't be seen with the seat in it's usual (all the way back) position. I mounted the control head, with it's handy little swivel mount, on the door of the slide out ashtray in the front dash (lucky I don't smoke). This has the neat side effect of being able to slide the control panel out and closer to my hand when driving. For the time being it's being held there by the double-sided velcro tape which came with the unit. When this fails, and I expect it to, I'll put a couple of small holes in the ashtray plastic to secure the mount. Oh well, ashtrays are replaceable... Final Thoughts Well, despite the rough edges outlined above, I am having fun which is the true measure of this hobby. I'm a good $900 poorer this week but I do think I have a radio which I'll grow to love. I really like the separated head installation, despite the effort it took to put it in. The memory and scan capabilities are nothing short of incredible and there are enough bells and whistles to keep me very busy for a while. I'll give it an overall thumbs up with an 8 rating on the 1 to 10 AA (amateurs anonymous) scale :-). -fred -- | Fred Lloyd AA7BQ Fred.Lloyd@West.sun.com | | Sun Microsystems, Inc. ...sun!flloyd | | Phoenix, AZ (Reality -- what a concept!) (602) 275-4242 | You can, by the way, rip out the 2 meter band unit and replace it as well. Several people in my area have done that and now have 741s that operate on 220, 440, and 1200 MHz. It would also be possible to make a 10/6/2 model, if you wanted. And yes, you can put two 440 modules in it for duplex, if you want. All you have to do is feed the power into the middle module, no matter which one that is. Kenwood apparently consider that moving the soldered-in power connection from the 2m module to whatever module you have in the middle to be beyond the capability of the average ham radio operator, and therefore they do not recommend removing the 2m module. I fear they may be right. It would be wise to check the radio's frequency. Out of five of the earlier TM-941s (same modules) that I checked, ALL were off frequency on transmit, several by more than a kHz. One of them was 5 kHz off on 440, which really messed it up. I suspect that whoever Kenwood buy crystals from doesn't age them enough. (Note: if your test equipment doesn't go up to 1200 MHz, just measure at 600 Mhz. There's enough 1/2f power leaking out of the radio to measure it with a probe held near the unit. Remember to set the deviation to half as much too.) By the way: if you like to switch your radio on and off with the ignition switch, but you want the radio's clock to continue to operate, you have to leave the radio power on. You can gimmick this up by adding a transistor switch to the control head that controls the power-on lead (same as the power switch does) whenever the car's ACC power is on. Note also that the 741 and 941 draw power even when they are switched off: the processor in the radio unit continues to run, pinging the control head every half-second to see if it's alive. If you park your car for a week whilst you're out of town, you may run your battery down a bit. - Brian