Kenwood TM-732A

[02TahoeMD]

Thought I would seek some "Elmer" assistance here.

I am studying to take my Technician exam this summer. A friend of mine just gave me his used Kenwood TM-732A 2 M / 70 cm rig that he never uses any more. Anyone here have experience with this radio? I am wondering if this would be a good starter radio or are there more advanced versions available now with more modern technology? I think the unit is about 10 years old, maybe a bit less, and I want to make sure I start out with something decent.

Any thoughts or feedback would be much appreciated!

 

[gary in ohio]

Thought I would seek some "Elmer" assistance here.

I am studying to take my Technician exam this summer. A friend of mine just gave me his used Kenwood TM-732A 2 M / 70 cm rig that he never uses any more. Anyone here have experience with this radio? I am wondering if this would be a good starter radio or are there more advanced versions available now with more modern technology? I think the unit is about 10 years old, maybe a bit less, and I want to make sure I start out with something decent.

That a very nice radio, Granted a few years old and doesnt have the remote head options current dual bands do but its has many of the features found in current generation radios. Dual receive including V+V and U+U, has cross band repeate (although not fully legal to use), has PL encode to access many repeaters may have the optional pl decode, It has only 50 memories but for most people that is more than enough. SO YEs its a nice radio to have an use. A modern equivalent would be a Kenwood TM-V71A at $400.

 

[DaveInDenver]

I'll second Gary's assessment. Never used the radio personally, but it looks to have all the basic stuff you'd need. It's 50W on VHF and 35W on UHF, pretty typical. Like Gary said, only has 50 memories, but that's enough for local use and there's no way to have every repeater programmed in anyway. So that's not much of a problem.

The only thing you might look into is that it has the TSU-7 board, this is the CTCSS codec module and you might need it to access repeaters. You friend hooked you up with a just fine early 1990s radio, you owe him beer. It's true that newer radios have a few features mostly related to memory size and organization, but functionally this radio will work great.

Manual:
http://inform3.kenwoodusa.com/Manuals/TM-732A.pdf

http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/fm_txvrs/TM732A.html
http://www.kb2ljj.com/data/kenwood/kenwood_bulletins.htm

 

[gary in ohio]

The only thing you might look into is that it has the TSU-7 board, this is the CTCSS codec module and you might need it to access repeaters.

The TSU-7 board was an decode board, I believe the radio came with encode by default.