The penguin's motorcycling and Jeep blog

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Kenwood TM-D710A

Well, I installed the radio today. Not much more to say. Now I have to figure out its obscure menu system and so forth, and input some channels... it was starting to get dusk by the time I was done. 'Nuff said there.

Last thing left to do: Add some speakers so I can actually hear the thing in my loud (!) Jeep...

-- Badtux the Experimenting Penguin

5 comments:

Gordon said...

Modern car radios are a lot easier to deal with than in the old days, plus they do everything but tickle yer ass with a feather. I put a new one in my Dakota a little while back. Easy. Probly should post about it at F&G.

BadTux said...

Well, the Kenwood is a ham radio, not a car stereo, but some of the things I learned are applicable to a car stereo. I learned how to take the radio cluster apart (because I mounted the Kenwood's head on top of the cluster, and had to take the cluster cover off to drill the holes and bolt the bracket onto it), so when I do replace the antiquated Jeep radio with a modern car radio, I should have a fairly easy job of it now that I know how everything comes apart. My Jeep's dash comes apart *much* more easily than most modern vehicles' dashboards... the trim strip at the top is just clipped on and pops right off, two screws under the trim strip, and the remainder of the radio / HVAC cluster cover is just clipped on and pops right off too. Last time I dealt with something like this was on an old Chevy S-10, and getting into the dashboard was a PITA on that POS...

I'll post a longer install description on the Kenwood as soon as I get some time (I am absolutely *slammed* at work)...

-Badtux the Overly Busy Penguin

Gordon said...

Wow. You can be out in the middle of DV and chat with someone at McMurdo! What a world we live in!

BadTux said...

McMurdo is offline right now, but Palmer Station isn't. The big problem is hitting a repeater from Death Valley that talks IRLP, the nearest I can see are in Tonopah and Pahrump, which are hard to hit unless you're in the southernmost part of DV up on a ridge somewhere. Note that I'm not licensed for HF and this isn't a HF rig, so catching the skip isn't happening even if the troposphere wasn't lousy for skipping right now because we're in a historic low for solar sunspot activity...

- Badtux the Hammy Penguin

Gordon said...

Does the ionosphere still combine at night? I don't listen to AM much any more.