Kenwood?

[happycappy]

Any department using Kenwood Radios? We are looking at different opitions to add to our fleet of radios? Currently using motorola 1250s. Looking for any postives or negatives using them.

Thanks,
Happycappy

[LTPVFD]

We have several portable Kenwood's for our officers, and a couple of Kenwood's in the duty trucks. What I like is the display screen that actually shows what channel you are on. :top: I don't like the "tone" when you turn the ignition on.

As far as the portables go, the batteries do not seem to hold their charge very long. Even after it has been in the charger all night, use it for a couple of minutes, and the battery is just about dead. :(

I also believe that the Kenwood's are quite a bit less money than Motorola's.

Hope this helps.

Stay safe !!

LTPVFD

[guitarmedic87]

We use Kenwood, They're are all I've ever used, seem to be okay, the display screen is nice. Some batteries I have gotten in the past will last 16-24hours with out being charged and i have also gotten new batteries that have only lasted a few hours when they were brand new. They are expensive to replace, at least in canada, I have found cheaper ones of e-bay though,

[Hacienda216]

As far as the portables go, the batteries do not seem to hold their charge very long. Even after it has been in the charger all night, use it for a couple of minutes, and the battery is just about dead. :(

LTPVFD

Sounds like a charging issue. Ni-Cad or Ni-Hm batteries are a helluva lot more tempermental than a Lithium Ion battery. They need to be charged and taken off the charger when they're done. They need to be used, worn down, and then charged again. If you leave the radio on the charger, as soon as that light kicks over to "charged" the charger stops charging the battery and the battery starts bleeding power. If that radio sat in the charger for 2 weeks without moving, it would still show "charged" but would likely be dead. Or maybe the radio showed "charged" too soon and it needs to be taken on and off the charger a few times to get it to fully charge. Don't forget to deep cycle charge them when they're new, and every 10 charging cycles, but make sure you don't wear them down too much when they're new, or their charge life is cut in half. What I'm getting at is don't discount the radio because of a battery issue; those are likely caused by operator error. If you're looking for new radios, look for lithium ion batteries and do your homework on how to maintain the batteries - they can be a pretty big investment to burn up.

[Blacknose]

We have been using Kenwood radio for years (over 15). We have tried others but keep coming back to the Kenwood.

Each member (about 65) has their own radio, charger and 2 Ni-MH batteries, lapel mike. The members are trained to change out their batteries every 24 hours if you have a call or not. Keep the batteries on a schedule. If a battery does not last a minimum of 24 hours we will first try and regenerate it and if that does not work we will replace it. Batteries seem to last about 2 – 3 years. We have had no issues with the radio itself, We have a number of departments, patrol, ambulance, mutual aid, and the weather channels programmed into them. We have the option of scanning what ever list of channels we want.

I can not remember the actual cost of the radio however I know it is not as much as you would think. Its around the $300.00 mark. So at that price it is disposable if something happens to it, like a tow truck driving over it. The end of my last radio, my battery survived.

We now have a programmer for all the radios so that we can save on the programming fee, it took about 8 radio programming fees to pay for it.

I work with the Motorola HT 1000 everyday at work for the last 10 years and the Motorola Sabers for the 7 years before that I do not see a huge difference in reliability compared to the cost difference.