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Reviews For: Alinco DR-135TPMKIII

Category: Transceivers: VHF/UHF+ Amateur Base/Mobile (non hand-held)

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Review Summary For : Alinco DR-135TPMKIII
Reviews: 4MSRP: $260
Description:
Two meter FM transceiver and AM air receiver.
Product is in production
More Info: http://alinco.com
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
1444.5
AD4C2006 Rating: 2023-02-09
GOOD RADIO BUT.... Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Hi there, I just purchased recently this small 50W 2M radio and after spending few minutes to program 50 repeaters and the national simplex freq (146.520) which was very easy task to do, installed it at my truck with a magnet mount quarter wave 19 inches tall antenna with flat swr of 1.1 over the whole 2M band.
Received audio its very loud and clear even with the builtin speaker, there is no need to use an external speaker, sensitivity is great, I can hear repeaters about 70 miles away, Tx audio is very good acording received reports from other hams BUT there is something wierd I never has experienced in any VHF or UHF radio before. This behavior is kinda bothering me and don't know how to fix it so if someone of the readers of this review know what to do to avoy this and can send me an email to ad4c@comcast.net I will appreciate it. This is what it happens, when I release the mic PTT to hear the other guy, for a second I will hear the last one or two letters of last word I said, its like a short monitor opening to hear myself, it last one second but that is not supouse to be happening.
Other than that its a very good radio that for $189 USD perform well.
AD4C
KN4FOT Rating: 2020-12-01
I'm quite pleased Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have more than one of these radios, a TMKII for mobile and a TMKIII at the house. As well as spare units in case anything happens to either one of the ones in use. (I do like them that much.)

The unit is fairly easy to use, though a read of the manual is in order. It's easy to input a new memory channel, but to change it you have to set it up in VFO mode and then re-save it. If you have a mic with a keypad, you can input any frequency in memory mode and the radio will begin to monitor that freq until you change the channel, which can be useful. The MkII allows you to jump 10 memory channels at a time if you press the F key, but this feature is gone in the MkIII. I got the unit I have mobile used and on about the two year anniversary the microphone cord sheathing began to fail, but I can't say how old it was before that. I have that unit mounted with the face facing straight up, so that could have accelerated it also. You can clone two units easily with a 3.5mm-3.5mm stereo audio cord.

The receiver is pretty good, not as good as Icom, but perhaps a little bit better than Yaesu. (Or at least Yaesu's Standard Horizon marine gear.) There is a digital squelch, so sometimes it can be affected by noise, this is worse if it's listening in narrow mode. This radio does have AM airband RX, which is pretty good but the AM mode is still wired up like an FM radio. If you have an airplane or transmitter right on top of you, the protection diodes will begin to limit and the output will become muted or even silent. But you have to be right next to them, like 9+80 or more.

The S meter seems to be fairly accurate, the manual doesn't really give a scale but I am leaning towards 0/1/3/5/9/+30 or so. If it's in scan mode, it just stops on any signal it receives, even if it doesn't open a tone squelch. This can get annoying if someone has the fusion repeater running.

It transmits at 4, 20 or 45ish W, with the hi power being variable between the two units. Audio quality is good and I get pretty good range using each unit with a glass mount antenna. (I "made" one for the attic of the current house, which is not our "forever home.") It does get warm during a QSO, but not so hot you can't touch it. I always run at 4W due to the proximity to other gear I have closeby.

All in all it's a good radio. I got it because I wanted a radio that could do airband RX and VHF hi. It's not a multiband, but it works. I'm happy with mine.

Edit: I should say I work at an airport and I listen to airband on the way in and out. If you're not driving within site of an FAA transmitter or having an airplane transmitting within a couple hundred feet or literally right on top of you, you won't hear your airband "muted."
AB0XE Rating: 2015-10-23
Great simple Radio Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I like this simple to use radio. I use it mainly for packet which was very easy to set up. It works great with PC or Mac Terminal programs.
I also use it regularly with UiView or AprsPoint for APRS in local use and sending packet to the ISS. One of the main differences that I noticed between this built in TNC and my KP3+ is their no Mail Box
ability but you still can Connect directly to another packet station.
AB0TO Rating: 2015-08-13
XFLOW setting is important for proper operation Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
OK, I've praised this rig and then I've changed my tune. Now I'm changing it again back to praise. After several months with it I finally discovered that one little parameter will make or break how well the TNC in this rig works: XFLOW. When using software that depends in RTS/CTS for flow control then XFLOW must be OFF, and the default is ON. If that parameter isn't set right then it will cause conflicts in the software and transmissions will hang with strange characters in the window. I have sent 7500 byte files in Outpost PMM with that parameter correctly set. It works either way in RMS Express with no difficulties.

So, in CMD mode type XFLOW OFF and hit enter to change that parameter, and then disconnect if CMD mode isn't needed. The TNC should work fine from that point on if it has been giving trouble.