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Reviews For: Kenwood TM-710GA

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

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Review Summary For : Kenwood TM-710GA
Reviews: 3MSRP: 600
Description:
VHF UHF mobile with aprs and a bunch of other features
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.kenwood.com/usa/com/amateur/tm-d710ga/
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0033
KJ7WUZ Rating: 2022-02-14
Rock solid rig Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I love this rig. I've got APRS dialed in. I have delivered email with WinLink 2000 RMS, sent text messages with APRS and I am starting on EchoLink shortly. I used LM-400 feedline to a Comet CX-333 antenna. It really reaches out running 50W at 9.6dBi.
I have had no bad signal reports and have reached out more than 50 miles in range to "local" repeaters.
If Kenwood was to change something, it would be to connect the microphone through the control head, rather than the base transceiver. Maybe a better power meter/signal indicator would be great.
It is just too bad that Kenwood recently discontinued manufacture of this rig, and it rapidly became "unobtanium". I do sincerely hope they have a new unit on its way with all the functionality of this radio.
K5XBP Rating: 2019-04-12
Dead on arrival Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Had a power problem the first day. Lost power after 30 minutes.
Returned to factory 3 times. Never fixed.
I guess it stayed on for 5 minutes and the was good enough for them. They never read my message that it will power off every time after 30 min to an hour.
Any way I out the $600.00 plus another $150.00 for all the times I returned it. I do have a TM 281 and a TS 570sg that work fine.
K8CPA Rating: 2018-03-06
It's a good radio but Kenwood needs to fix a few things Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I do bawk at given this thing 5 stars.

Don't misunderstand me, it's a great radio and it has a ton of features on it! but there are two things that Kenwood needs to look at fixing on this radio in the next firmware update. now keep in mind I don't think there's any firmware updates available for this radio yet, at least I haven't seen any.

1. The biggest problem with this radio right now is this, when you are trying to sort the list of stations received on aprs, sometimes when the radio is trying to sort the call signs and it stores up to 99 or 100 I believe it is; sometimes the radio head itself the control head will crash and shut off and eventually the RF unit shuts down too. This points to a bug in the firmware and Kenwood needs to fix it.

2. If you have the beep enabled on this radio and you are trying to send out a message via aprs sometimes the beep will hang up and constantly put out a tone until it receives an acknowledgement of a packet and it will stop that beeping it's a solid tone beep and it's very loud and it's very annoying again this points to a bug in the firmware and Kenwood needs to fix it. Also to that beep will sound for as long as it's receiving a aprs signal when the when the signal drops out and there's no activity the beep stops... this sounds like a bug in the firmware.

Also to something I'll never understand Kenwood provided you with a plenty long enough cord from the RF unit to the head but only gives you a short cord for the microphone this was a stupid idea why not just put a long cord on the microphone and be done with it? Obviously somebody somewhere wanted to make some money off of ham operators.

These little problems aside it is a great radio and I've gotten a lot of good in use out of it when I bought it I was using it while I would go up to see my dad at the nursing home but now that my mom goes with me I really don't need to take it so now it you is used as a digipeater on aprs and for local Communications around here.