Tm-v71a

[LtDoc]

Anyone here have one and use it? I've got this wild hair for a newer radio and the '71 is one of my choices. I'm interested in hear the 'bad' sides of them, not how good they are. Or maybe the things 'they' could have done better?
- 'Doc

 

[ve9jmc]

I have 1 of those dual band radios. the only downfall I see with it is the lack of receive audio. They could have put a better speaker in the darn thing. The receive audio is weak, but put on an external speaker and that takes care of the weak audio. Other than that I don't have any complaints with that radio.

 

[mrweather]

I agree. I've had mine for over 18 months and it's been flawless except for the audio. In a mobile environment you almost need a proper external speaker.

 

[AK9R]

I have a TM-V71A and two TM-D710As which use the same RF deck as the V71.

No complaints.

 

[GROCKSHD]

Any over heating issues? A guy in my club keeps mentioning that my D710 is gonna need to be installed in a cool place.

 

[AK9R]

I rarely run full power. There's an old ham radio saying that you should put your money in your antenna rather than your transmitter/amplifier.

Most of the time I'm on the "M" setting which is about 10 watts. I do occasionally need to run full power, but I've never had an overheating problem. As long as the radio can blow fresh air over the heat sink and you keep your transmissions at a reasonable length, I don't think heat is a problem with these radios.

 

[GROCKSHD]

Thanks for the info. I just received my D710 yesterday and was looking for the best place to install the box, so it could get plenty of air. I too will be running on Medium Power, unless it's absolutely necessary to run High Power.

 

[KD0IPM]

If you are looking to cross band it irritates me that it's not a bit smarter, but its not built to be a repeater:
1. I want to key up right after the contact quits talking but the repeater I'm getting into has to drop before I can key it up to transmit.
2. Locked to a 3 min transmit timeout when crossbanding. Can't remember if it kills the radio or just drops.
3. The memories only have groups, not banks. I wish one could go into group one and if I'm turning the knob it goes back to the beginning of that bank, not on to the next memory channel. The groups are 0-99, 100-199, etc. One can scan groups, but not tune around without reversing which way you are turning the know to go back to the beginning of the group.

Mine sits on the floor in the extended cab of my truck, no overheating, I've got a D710 that's a floater rig and another v71 as a base. Kenwood makes the only dual banders I'll buy right now unless I start horsing around with D-Star.

I can't think of anything else I don't like, Yaesu and Icom have nothing to draw me with. The Yaesu 8800's menus are messed up and the general operation of the radio doesn't make sense, and the only true dual bander Icom makes now is the 2820 and it's ungodly expensive.

 

[AlaskaMike]

I run full power quite a bit on my -71a and have yet to experience the overtemp circuit kicking in. Agreed on the somewhat weak speaker, but even in my loud diesel pickup I generally have no problems hearing 99% of transmissions.

Can't really think of any detractors, but then again I'm a brand new ham.

 

[krokus]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.973 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Running an external speaker is a good thing, especially since it allows you to separate the audio sources.

I have a V71, but have not had much chance to use it. (The vehicle I was going to install it in died.)

 

[MTS2000des]

I've had my V71A at the house since I bought it last summer to replace an old reliable TM-V7A which lacked DCS.

The crossband timeout timer is locked to 3 minutes, problem is if you're listening to a repeater being retransmitted on your remote base frequency and it stays keyed up generated a PL/DPL (and not gating audio) it will drop out and you won't hear anything on your HT. No TOT warning or anything.

Other than that, it's a superb radio for crossband, Great audio and works super on DCS. As far as overheating, mine stays on high power on UHF 24/7 as a remote base receiver for our repeater system at my house, and has never overheated. The fan system and heat sink works very well. It will get warm but not burning hot.

Control head is superbly laid out, and you can reverse it on the radio body for speaker facing up or down, as well as change the backlight from green to amber to match your vehicle interior. Comparing it to the FT8800 (I own both) the V71A is a clear winner hands down. Biggest gripe I have with the 8800 other than the ergonomics, is the wonky and useless CTCSS and DCS decode logic. You mine as not have tone decode enabled as it just opens whenever it wants like it's set to carrier squelch anyway on the 8800.

The control head also looks better. No other crosssbanding radio to compare it with on the market. The Icom IC-2820 is the next step up, and it's almost 200 bucks more in price, and this is WITHOUT the D-Star module.