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Reviews For: Kenwood TH-28E

Category: Transceivers: VHF/UHF+ Amateur Hand-held

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Review Summary For : Kenwood TH-28E
Reviews: 5MSRP:
Description:
144 mhz hand held
Product is in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0054.8
N5STT Rating: 2018-11-28
Very nice HT Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I got mine as a gift from a family member. It works flawlessly, even with the original battery!

I used it a few times while hiking, I have to turn the power down to medium because the battery has lost some stamina, but the radio does its job.

HB9OAY Rating: 2010-02-11
Perfect 2nd hand rig ! Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
As I decided to get a second HT aside of my TH-F7e, I headed for a cheap 2nd hand rig .
The TH-28 design and ergonomy has captured my interest and the size+price was in my target.
It wasn't easy to find a good one on the WEB (maybe it's to good to be sold) but eventually I did.

The reception and Tx quality are far better than my other new rig and is almost intermod free (not a common ability on new rigs).
It is able to recive in 70cm and air band (FM+AM) and the original antenna is god for its size. A longer one work obviously better and is recomanded to have it beside the original one.
My unit was already equipped with the new available PB-13H battery-pack (not from Kenwood) which is a NiMH 1650mAh (original is 700mAh) and a BT-8 battery case on which you can use even better NiMH cells.

So, overall I'm very happy with it. Old stuff sometime works better than new ;-)
PE1RLN Rating: 2004-09-04
Verrrry nice! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Already have a TH-79 but it is always difficult to use in messy places because I want to keep it well. Therefore I was looking for a 2m HT and I got this one very cheap. Like the size and design and features. 70cm reception is nice but useless for me because there are no 70cm repeaters around. Power is good, audio the same.

Beste advantage (to ALL other HT's): it stays upright on the table without falling over. I hate it when they do that and that's probably why this HT is so beautiful!
VA7IRL Rating: 2002-12-19
Plenty of power, features and usability in a small package Time Owned: 3 to 6 months.
As a new ham, this radio was my first purchase (bought used on eBay). I have been very pleased with its performance, having gotten good audio reports on a repeater 40kms away, from my basement, on medium power, on the original stock battery, albeit with a Motorola portable antenna. I like the range of the features available (mine came with a tone board already in it, fortunately) and ease of use (important for me, having never programmed or used an amateur radio before). It's so nice to have a backlight that actually lights the display, too!

I live in an urban area with lots of pager intermod and other interference, but this radio seems (in my experience, at least) to have good rejection characteristics, even with a broadband, receive-only antenna attached.

I also like its size - from pictures I looked at before buying, I thought it was the size of, well, a radio(!), but it's really not much bigger than an older cell phone like, say, a Nokia 5300.

It seems very solidly put together, having a one-piece plastic shell that's so hard it appears almost metallic with no flimsy, protruding bits to catch on anything. The battery pack slides right into to the bottom of the unit (kinda like a pistol magazine!), so there is no battery compartment door to break off.

My only minor gripes are a similar problem with rotating frequency/channel selector which, like the previous poster's, sometimes clicks without doing anything (interestingly, my HTX-242 has the same problem). The key lock switch similarly doesn't work very well, and the numeric buttons are a little small for programming (although this is usually a one-off activity and is a by-product of the radio's overall size).

The only other thing that has gone wrong is the BNC antenna connection, which is held to the case by a threaded ring. If this ring gets loose, the only thing holding the BNC connector to the circuit board inside is a thin wire soldered to the base of the connector. Needless to say, mine broke, but a good tightening of the lock ring followed by some deft re-soldering by a steady-handed friend, soon fixed the problem.

Overall, this is a great little portable which I would recommend to anyone starting off in the hobby. I was going to get another mobile unit to use a base station in my house, but I'm so impressed by the performance of this radio, that I probably won't bother now (well for a while anyway :-)).

From Richmond, BC, Canada,
VA7IRL
SM6UNC Rating: 2002-12-13
A good 2M HT Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I have had this little station for over twelve years and it has served me very well.
What I do like about this HT is the nice ergonomic form it has and it fits good in your hand.
I have really enjoyed the Paging and Messaging feature. That is some thing I do miss with many other stations today.
The reason why I do not give it rating five is because the frequency knob started to "jump" over frequencies some times when you turn it after about two years, and I also miss the CTCSS function that you have to buy separatly.
I just wish that this station was a duobander, but that's life.
I really like this HT!