Kenwood Radios

[tripperff]

I'm looking for opinions on both Mobile and Portable radios from Kenwood. Do they hold up as well as Motorolas? Especially the portables under the severe use firefighters put them through. We have a couple mobiles which seem to be working out great but the couple portables we have are assigned to EMS officers so they don't see a lot of use under firefighting conditions.

[ff7134]

Tripper

We have has Kenwood TK280's for about 1 1/2 yrs and other than a few guys trying to use them as wheel blocks. I have dropped mine in a portable pond and after it dried out it was fine. If you have any other questions let me know

[engine23ccvfd]

We use an all Kenwood system and it works very well. I believe the handhelds are TK380's with a 3rd party lapel mic. The radios have worked very well but we have had probs with the lapel mics.

[Sleuth]

Our only problem with our Kenwoods are the officers (but not the troops) losing them.

[ECFD924]

I have a Kenwood TK-280 with Kenwood lapel mic. It has seen its fair share of interior fire attacks and has been in the water twice and worked fine when its dried out. The only problem I've had with mine is the battery comes loose and will cut on and off when it is shook around.

[mtbrights]

We have TK-270's and they work fine for the money. We also have one of the new ultra small 2140's and it doesn't seem to work as well as either the 270's or a few HT-1250 Motorola's we're evaluating. Your thumb winds up resting on the scratchable LCD display, sound quality and volume is lacking out of the speaker and most serious, the range seems to be way off the others for some reason (all are 5 watts). It's a VHF system and I still think a different antenna would help the 2140. I wouldn't buy another one however. We're not a high volume department and so can't really speak to "toughness".

[EMTfarmer]

We use the Kenwood 272G portables and have been very satisfied with them. Of course this is EMS and not fire, but I'm afraid my crew is not known for treating their radios gently . I used a Kenwood mobile in my farm pickup for many years before going to cellular and it held up to those conditions very well (dust, grease, vibration and other typical farm use).

[be58d2003]

New here... and this is somewhat off the subject, Kenwood makes excellent car audio systems... That is the only brand I will own. Some I imagine, and by some of the responses here... They are an excellent product.

[NCKSFIRE]

Just bought 15 of the Kenwood 272G and 3 TK 760 with our FEMA grant. So far everyone likes them. Have another 5 coming for the EMS guys. It will be nice to have everyone with the same kind of radios instead of several different ones. 272 were $355 with rapid chg and hi cap battery. We also got 15 Minitor IV. They also seem to be working good so far.

[toddmcbr]

We have made the switch from Motorola also. We have purchased 9 TK272G for 302.10 a piece (inlcuding current 20.00 rebate which lasts until the end of Sept. I've used these radios for several years and have had absolutely no problems. We also have a TK790 VHF with dual heads in our ambulance and we love that radio as well.

The only complaint that I have about Kenwood is that they don't make voice pagers. They need to wake up, The fire service could use a RELIABLE pager.

[nmfire]

I agree with everything everyone has said. We use all Kenwood 90 series mobiles and portables. Excellent product and built like a tank. A whole lot more user friendly than most /\/\otorola stuff especially when it comes to programming and configuration. The dual band and dual head capability is awsome. Never had a problem with any of them other than a battery or two.

[Sleuth]

Toddmcbr, we page over our Kenwoods, Tk 260, 260G, and 272G models. We issue a radio per FF, which is a great help. I live way over on one side of the area, so I can tell the guys to pick me up on the way to the scene. Or, I can tell them to take off if they are going the other way, and I will follow up with the tender.

[rfcmitch]

We only have one, cause as usual skeptical about change. And one of our Chiefs has one and at first it worked like crap. Until we took off the lapel mic, then it started to kick some serious.... well ya know. Its good.

[nmfire]

The regular Kenwood lapel mics are not too great when it comes to water. They have a tenency to go open mic. Get a waterproof OTTO brand mic.