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Reviews For: Kenwood TM-481

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

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Review Summary For : Kenwood TM-481
Reviews: 1MSRP:
Description:
70cm 2-way base/mobile radio
Product is in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0015
WA7SGS Rating: 2014-12-20
The UHF twin to the TM-281 Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Kenwood does not sell this radio in the USA as they decided to only offer dualbanders here. I found mine on an eBay listing being sold by a company in China. 9 days after placing my order it arrived. The cost was about $250 shipped.

The front panel looks identical to a TM-281. Looking at the heat sink chassis from the side shows only a minor difference. All jacks are the same as the TM-281.

Differences: The readout is light green instead of orange as the TM-281's is. There is no NOAA WX. There is no automatic offset but that is not needed on 70cm. Power output is 45W/25W instead of the 65/25 of the TM-281.

Not wanting to deal with noisy fans that could fail, a lesser grade case (the TM-281/481's are milspec grade heavy duty) and unneeded by me features, I went with adding a TM-481 to the TM-281 I aleady had. A multiplexer took care of having two radios on one antenna. I added a commercial grade Kenwood desk mike (KMC-9C).

Having owned the TM-281 for over a year I was quite happy to get the TM-481. The total cost of the two radios plus the multiplexer is about the same as a TM-V71A. If you like rugged simple durable designs then the TM-481 will fill the bill quite nicely.