CHIRP

No, I have not.

It is my understanding that many of these old TK-360s have been put into Amateur service. Current programmed frequencies are in that range, so obviously, it's not the radio that's refusing the change, it's the software. If it's not a "bug" then perhaps I should have posted it as a "feature request?" I don't have a Windows machine to run Kenwood's or other software, so I use CHIRP. (Prefer to support folks like CHIRP, anyway.) I originally posted on the mailing list and was told to post it as an issue.

We have a lot of power with Chirp. We could write 146.52 MHz into this radio if we wanted. In my opinion that power comes with the responsibility to program sensible limits where the radio transmits a clean signal. Not every Chirp user will take it upon themselves to test with a spectrum analyzer after programming. When it was written, the author of this driver chose to set the limits to those specified by Kenwood. If we are going to change them, we should do it intelligently. We should test the radio at various frequencies to see where it starts to behave poorly, then set the limit there. This might be 440 MHz, 430 MHz, or 420 MHz--I can't say without testing. Do you have access to the lab equipment to perform this test? I don't have a TK-360 here to test against.

Unfortunately, no. However, I am willing to send the radio in question to you to use for testing. (After all, I didn't pay anything for it and I can't use it on the repeaters I want to with it programmed as it is now.)

Hi to all, Chirp's drivers author here for this radio.

Just for clarification:

The Chirp's driver supports all the radios and variants of them (you has a TK-360/F1 in this case) with the dealer limits, it's well known that all of this Kenwood radios can work out of the specs (OEM software complain but works) but the main question is how far from specs?

We follow a rule of just teak the band edges when we have reports of someone that can work with it and has tested a safe limit. In this case and in my experience it "must be safe" to allow going down to 440 (from 450 OEM limit)

73 de Pavel CO7WT

Just an update as to why nothing has been changed yet: there is an ongoing discussion between developers on the mailing list: http://intrepid.danplanet.com/pipermail/chirp_devel/2017-April/004544.html (click Next Message to read the rest)

Hi,

After some developers ideas exchange there is a proposed solution for this on the issue #4789: allow a +/-4.0% over the OEM limits.

That will safely allow (based on real tests) to work near ham bands in the variants that are outside them. That Issue (#4789) will be changing the entire Serie 60/60G from Kenwood, see the issue for the list of all the radios covered.

In the specific case of the radio in this issue TK-360/F1 the OEM range is 450 to 470 Mhz, a +/- 4.0% increase will expand real limits to 432 to 488 Mhz, see the spreadsheet attachment in the #4789 Issue for the example.

73 de Pavel CO7WT.

Hi John and Tom,

John, can you test the latest Chirp's build to see if it works for you now?

If so please report it here to resolve/close this issue.

73 de Pavel CO7WT.