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Reviews For: Kenwood TM-V7A

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

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Review Summary For : Kenwood TM-V7A
Reviews: 111MSRP: 719.95
Description:
The dual band mobile with the cool blue display.
Product is not in production
More Info: http://www.kenwood.net/products/index.cfm?AMA=open&ama_mob=open
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
001113.8
KD7SET Rating: 2003-02-22
I like it! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I Just got mine about two weeks ago used ($230). Still had the box and all the cables. There is no problem with the display that I can see. I really like the cross band repeat funtion. I'll write more on this radio later as I learn more. I now use my G707 as my base station.
KC8UDC Rating: 2002-12-26
Great radio Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
Overall I find that the TM-V7a is a great radio. The blue display is better than some of others I have seen. When using it in strong sunlight, the white contrast mode is MUCH better than blue. For shack use, either one looks great. The microphone and DTMF pad are of excellent quality. The ability to switch into AM receive mode is great for scanning below the ham 144 mhz band.
KG6IIU Rating: 2002-11-18
only one radio Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
if i could have only one
2m/70cm radio this would be the one.
using it as a base and to(locked-band.use a ct)
read the manual carefully
(cross band&locked band&scanning especially)
KC0MSQ Rating: 2002-11-18
Very good radio. Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I gave this radio a 5 even though the display is hard to read when used as a mobile. I have it mounted low and facing up in my car, which helps, but sometimes glare is still a problem. When the display is cold you have to crank up the contrast to read it, but as it warms up you have to turn it back down. Arg. I just try to leave it alone until it warms up.

The intermod rejection is pretty good, and the AIP does a good job at shutting it out completely, although received signal strength suffers slightly. Received audio is good, although as with most mobiles you should consider external speakers. Yes speakers, plural; this unit supports two external speakers and allows you to assign each receiver to it's own speaker. Makes it a lot easier to tell which band you are listening to.

Transmit is good and I've never had anybody complain about weak audio or under/over modulation. It gets warm at full power on extended transmit, but the little fan on the back seems able to keep up (good thing it's quiet). I like the mic-control feature which lets you control all the important features directly from the mic, but it can be disabled if you wish.

The cross-band repeat function is cool, but I wish there was an auto-id function. I guess you can't ask for everything for less than $500! Right now I'm using my V7A in my car, but I've also used it on my base and it works great there as well. I'm planning on getting a cheaper dual-band for the car and moving the V7A into the shack permanently, primarially because of the display and the cross-band repeat, which will be of much more use as a base.
N4UZZ Rating: 2002-07-09
Great radio but the display sucks! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Wonderful radio. Rejects intermod well with use of the AIP circuit, and S-squelch helps also. This is FM, so we are not into "weak signal work". Cross band repeat is a pleasure. Scanning is a pretty good clip, not as fast as the Yaesu FT7100 (but that one scans so fast that it stumbles over it's own feet after scanning a while and starts displaying the wrong frequencies) but faster than the Alinco DR-605 (but then, what isn't?)

Now to the display. What in the world were the people at Kenwood thinking??? Didn't anyone notice that the "cool blue" marketing guys were prevailing at the total cost of any mobile functionality? If you are mobile, in the daytime, with sunglasses on, you will _not_ be able to see this display, period! Better start enabling beeps and start counting. At night the stupid thing is soo bright (even with "auto-dim) that you better not have it close to your line of vision, or your optical receivers will be desensed, folks!

And then this display won't stay the same! My base rig at home requires re-adjustment of the contrast every time I turn it on. 20 minutes later it has to be re-adjusted because the screen is washing out. And to think that it sits next to a lousy 40 bucks Radio Shack scanner that has the perfect LCD that can be read day and night with perfect sharpness, never needs adjustment, and that has been a standard cheap Korea electronics component in all sorts of equipment for the last seven years. Could have had that, and could have been happy. But noooo ! We couldn't leave well enough alone!

The display seems to be a seperate plug-in unit. May be some smart guy will manufacture a simple back-lit LCD replacement for it.

Fortunately, I don't use the display when I am mobile. So, I can give the radio a 4 and be kind, mostly because everything else on this rig is simply a 5 out of 5.
KB9OUC Rating: 2002-06-13
DEFECTIVE PRODUCT Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I purchased my Kenwood TM-V7A new in July 1998. The radio has nice options, but the mic is bad and the display needs help. My display started developing lines that block out the iinformation about 1-2 years ago and they only keep getting worse. I would rate Kenwood's support a 1 out of 5 on getting the display fixed. I have tried to contact them 3-4 times, and they just don't seem to give a rip. i have also had to fix the mic two times.

----------------------
Earlier 3-star review posted by KB9OUC on 2001-03-09

I have owned this mobile for 2-3 years. The receive and transmit are good, and it has a lot of really nice freaures. My display has recently started to act up. Lines to down my display and block the information. I have also had to fix the stock mic twice. The PTT button is terrible. Kenwood support is not the greatest either. I have owned other Kenwood products, and in general, I think they produce good equipment.
KE4RWS Rating: 2002-05-08
Pretty Good So Far . . . Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This is my preliminary evaluation of the Kenwood TM-V7A purchased new from HRO in April 2002. Also purchased was the PG-4 programming cable. The software was downloaded via the Kenwood website.

Prior to purchasing this radio I read the reviews here and at other locations. I also spoke with several folks who actually owned them to get their "hands-on" opinions as well. I also emailed Kenwood Technical Support to specifically inquire about this vertical-line issue I've been reading about to see what their official position was on the alleged problem. I was promptly emailed back with a one-liner response which read, "The display issue in the TM-V7A has been resolved". The lack of any further statement, and the email's extreme brevity makes me wonder though . . .

I ordered a new one and within a few days had it all hooked up to the base station antenna, programmed some frequencies into it and was ready to try it out. First, I found the free programming software quick and easy to use. It's always a big plus when a manufacturer provides the software free of charge. The cable is another story though. For some reason the cable was decidedly proprietary. That is, Kenwood decided to install level-conversion in the DB-25 connector. They didn't do this on the TM-D700A or the TH-D7A(G) models (and maybe others). The PG-4 cable can however be made, but it's a pain for the average Joe (like me).

Once the radio was programmed and ready to go it was apparent the display could be a problem in the vehicle, but looked and worked very well in a base station installation (more on the display later). The most noticeable things about the display was it's ability to have a 7 character alpha-numeric tag just above the frequency readout. I also took note the radio was able to display and monitor two VHF or two UHF frequencies at the same time. The radio can also have one band completely turned off and all readouts removed from the display in the event the user wanted to utilize the V7A as a single-band radio (either VHF or UHF). The display is indeed useful in the way I describe it, but again, my opinion would be to use it as a base station only.

As for the actual features the radio has, it seems to be loaded from the factory with very useful things, some of which were optional or required modification only a few years ago. One such feature is the CTCSS encode/decoder. This is included as standard in this model. Also, the radio will cross band repeat either one-way or both ways. An optional 500ms "hangtime" can be programmed into the repeater operation or left out completely. The improved microphone which is now standard on all Kenwood mobile's seems to be a good sturdy microphone with backlighting, although there have been a few reports of stiff PTT operation on some units. I've had three of these mics now and all of them operate relatively easily the way I use them. This may be an individual issue with particular users rather than the mic itself. The mic can be programmed to control the radio which is really nice. You can open the squelch, enter a frequency or channel directly, and change various radio configurations by way of the microphone.

After about a week in the shack I moved the V7A to the car which I was ill-advised to do, but in order to be objective I needed to see for myself what most people were saying about this display thing while mobile. I went on a trip and used the radio everyday for about 7 days. I found the radio itself to perform very well while mobile. I used a commercial Motorola external speaker and the radio produced plenty of audio for the speaker. Operationally the V7A was splendid. But the display suffered greatly during the daytime, but was adequate at night. I had the display mounted in such a manner that it directly faced me while driving, but angled upward just enough to not see reflective glare. During a typical day I found the display to suffer greatly from LCD wash-out to the point I couldn't see what was being displayed at times. Other times the display was barely visible because it wasn't bright enough. Aside from the display issue, the V7A performed exceptionally well though. Again, night-time viewing of the display was pleasant and could be dimmed adequately.

When I returned home I immediately moved the V7A back to the shack where it is today. I still need to test it on packet and see how it performs with 1200 and 9600 baud throughput. Another great feature of the V7A is it's ability to operate packet and voice simultaneously. In other dual band models (except for a very few) if you operate packet on one band and voice on the other you always had to be mindful of where your main band indicator was at all times to prevent voice or data going out over the wrong band. The V7A is essentially "assigned" the band you want data on which enables the user to operate both voice and packet at the same time. For instance, you can operate packet on 145.010 MHz and voice on 442.850 MHz without the fear of your packets being transmitted on the UHF band. That's a big plus in my book, and this isn't something I've seen mentioned here before.

The V7A seems to operate resonably cool even at high-power output. I use mine in cross band repeat nearly every day and it handles reasonably timed transmissions. I would recommend operating an external fan on the V7A if you plan on operating cross band repeat on a regular basis though. The chassis-mounted fan does a decent job of cooling the radio, but I like to be certain when operating double-duty such as cross band repeat mode. Fans are cheap, dual band mobile radio's aren't, and that's the bottom line.

My bottom line is the Kenwood TM-V7A is a good buy at it's current market price which is $399-419 at the time of this writing. It's features and abilities make it a very good base station installation. There are however two things to keep in mind about this model. First, I strongly caution it's use while mobile unless you don't mind not being able to see the display. Second, until I know for certain the vertical line problem really isn't a problem anymore it warrants caution by that alone. I'm told Kenwood doesn't sell just the detachable display unit so replacement of the radio can be rather costly for only a display problem. Mine hasn't produced any of the display problems others have mentioned. My V7A is also only a few weeks old at this time so I would hope it wouldn't, but in the end time will tell, and both problems I've described with the V7A seem to revolve around the display in one form or another. That's why I rate the V7A a 4 out of 5, due to the display. If Kenwood has in fact resolved the vertical line problem in these units, then you only need keep in mind the display issue while mobile. But these are two things to keep in mind when considering this rig at this time.

If you've read this far then I appreciate your patience! My reviews tend to be somewhat long because I make every attempt to be as objective as I can about the products I rate and review, without injecting personal issues about any given product. Thanks again for your time and I'll follow up with another review once I've used the V7A further.
KF6OBM Rating: 2002-04-27
Delay purchase of TM-V7A until bugs are worked out. Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I bought and installed a Kenwood TM-V7A back in 1998. I bought a Kenwood because I was looking for a quality name brand product, which I felt could give me many years of good service. It was to my great surprise that the control panel of this unit steadily got more and more vertical lines in it and that finally it would no longer transmit but only receive. Also the display has always been hard to view in daylight hours. I advise amateurs to delay purchase of this unit until Kenwood works the bugs out of it. Kenwood should also admit they have a problem with this unit and at least repair it at a reduced cost. Otherwise I will not purchase another Kenwwod in the future.
KE3YD Rating: 2002-04-21
I love the radio but hate the defects! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I own three of these radios. They were all purchased in 1998. I love to use the radio, like its features, can live with the display (keep it pointed toward you), but don't think that two of the three should have developed defects in four years.

One is used mobile. This year it developed an intermittent problem. Sometimes it won't turn on; other times it turns off by itself; then other times it continues to receive (not transmit) while the display goes blank.

Another is used on packet and as a base station. Early on (after two years) it developed the infamous lines in the display. They have continued to get worse.

The third one is used by my son (N3WAU) as a base unit. It is still working just as when new. It receives the least amount of use of the three.

I would love to replace the defective radios with new ones of the same model. However, my experience makes me afraid replacements would have a short life also.

I am giving this radio a three because 2/3 of mine developed defects too soon. I don't like that track record--not for a radio this expensive and of suppposed Kenwood quality.

73, Lee - KE3YD
KC0MMX Rating: 2002-04-21
Kenwod...Please redesign the display! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Like most people the display needs work. It is very hard to see no matter what you set the contrast to. Make the display deeper in a recess like a tv screen and that may help, or change it to a LCD with a backlite. The only other problem I see, maybe I was spoiled by the FT-7100M (that is a different review), is this unit doesn't have automatic repeater splits in the UHF band. Driving and having to set that up is a hassle. Maybe because the UHF band plan is not yet standardized or wasn't during production.

Other than that it was worth the trade-up from the Yeseau which suffered serious mic overmodulation and band scan motorboat noise. I'm still learning how to use this unit and will report back in a few months. RECOMMEND BUYING THIS UNIT!!! Kenwood employees? Take note and pass the display problems to your engineers during the company picnic. :)

73
KC0MMX