kenwood TK 2312

[WillB]

Looking for some feed back on this radio. I have friend that was asking me about them. Not much showed up in searching. Are they a fairly new radio on the market?

[mmckenna]

I've never owned one, but here is what info I had on it.

The TK-2312 was released in September of 2010. It was intended as a replacement for the 2212 and 3212, as well as the 272 and 372 radios. It does 5 watts on VHF and UHF, 2 tone decode.
128 conventional channels.
Single Priority/Single & Multi-Zone scan
8 character display
RSSI display
9 programmable keys.
Voice Inversion scrambling
PL, DPL, 2 tone and DTMF encode and decode
FleetSync and MDC-1200 per zone.
Will do GPS Mic (KMC-48GPS with FleetSync.

There are 3 models:
TK-2312K, 136 - 174MHz
TK-3312K, 450 - 520MHz
TK-3312K2, 400 - 470MHz

List price was in the $350 range back in late 2010. Still produced and I don't see it listed on the end of life map yet.
Looks like a low end public safety/high end commercial use radio. Uses the 2 pin audio accessories.

[Durandal1224]

Hey Will, Our county has large number of them in service and I myself have played with one quite a bit and for the money, they cant be beat; Robust construction, good sensitivity, and great signalling options make it a solid radio. My only huge gripes are that the speaker doesn't have alot of bass behind so in noisier environments you may miss a bit of traffic, and its a tiny radio IMHO. The signalling interface is reminiscent of Kenwood radios of recent years, along with the addition of MDC-1200 signalling. Worth noting is that the customisablity of the MDC-1200 parameters pales in comparison to motorolas, e.g. offering no type of preamble bit sync. The 2312 also allows only one setup or "system" with MDC-1200 and depending on your needs this may be a turnoff, e.g. we have an officer that works at two P.D.'s in our county and uses a 2312 but he cant put his unit # for both agencys specific to the channel, so he just sticks with the agency he works full time. The battery life is also great, coming standard with a Li-ion battery that will easily get you through a 12 hr shift and then some. We have had the 2312s(about 30-50) in service for about 2-3 years and have only had to replace one battery, if that should be any indication of quality. All-in-all, a solid radio for the money. your mileage may vary.

[MTS2000des]

I have one, and for a low priced analog conventional radio, it cannot be beat. With morons selling decade old beat up crap on Ebay for absurd prices, you can get a TK-2312 for the same money which is a current production product with a full 2 year warranty (when purchased for an Authorized Kenwood dealer).

128 channels, zones can be as few or as many channels as you like (up to 128 channels max), continuous rotary. Does both MDC1200 and fleetsync, encodes and decodes 2-tone, scan with priority- the radio does DTMF ANI and DTMF dialing. Nice 8 character display with RSSI indicator.

Performance wise, these ROCK. Side by side they beat the pants of my best Jedi radios for RX sensitivity. Battery life with the included Li-ION battery is amazing. Days of receiving or will last a full 8-10 hours of HEAVY transmit duty. Transmit audio is clear, not distorted, and has great frequency response. RX audio is LOUD, CRISP and clear. Radio is built very well, but not bulky, it is the PERFECT sized of a portable, not too small, not too big, and easy to carry.

Two two pin classic Kenwood accessory connector means audio accessories are cheap and abundant, as are programming cables. The programming software is reasonably priced. The latest version of KPG-134DN forces narrowband EXCEPT on 143-149, so it's HAM friendly, and you can still set a channel to wideband IF you set the transmit frequency to RX only, like NOAA weather- thanks Kenwood for making that possible.
Plenty of option buttons you can configure to your liking, a total of 7 keys on the front, and two side buttons. Very flexible to tailor the radio to your needs. Did I mention that, in usual Kenwood form, the KPG-134DN is the easiest, painless programming software? Runs fine on both XP and my Windows 7 32 bit machines.

I would say this has got to be the best of the best of low priced, modern analog portables. They do all channel steps and are of course, fully narrowband compliant, unlike other low priced radios of a similar tier like the Motorola CP185.

You can find these for less than $260 new if you smart shop. A great Kenwood radio. It's a winner.

[zane018]

I recently bought one, not sure if they all come with the pager built in but mine does. By chance does anyone know how to setup/use this radio as a pager? It seems to be a little confusing with all this encode/decode/2-tone stuff.

[cabletech]

First off you need to know what the paging tones and timing is and if dispatch is also using a PL (QT) tone.

Once you have that, then set the recieve frequency information, then go to options, 2tone and enter the paging tonesa.

Use the program help files. All information you need is there.

[zane018]

Yeah i got all the tone info set, just don't know how to set it to the right frequency

Originally Posted by cabletech

First off you need to know what the paging tones and timing is and if dispatch is also using a PL (QT) tone.

Once you have that, then set the recieve frequency information, then go to options, 2tone and enter the paging tonesa.

Use the program help files. All information you need is there.

[Avery93]

Originally Posted by zane018

Yeah i got all the tone info set, just don't know how to set it to the right frequency

First, go to Edit -> 2-Tone. Then select Decode (2-Tone 1), enter your tones, and configure all of the options such as auto reset and alert tones. Now on the zone information screen, under the Optional Signalling column, select 2-Tone 1 on the channels you want the radio to alert on.

Now click Zone Edit (on the same screen), and select the Audio Control setting you want. "QT/DQT or optional signalling" means the channels with optional signalling are "open" and you will hear all traffic on the channel, and the radio will alert when your tones are received. "QT/DQT and optional signalling" means the channels are muted and you will only hear traffic after your tones are received. This is a zone wide setting.

[ramal121]

In addition, optional signaling is enabled on a per channel basis.

[zane018]

Okay Thanks!! That helped a ton, so on the radio itself what would the key assignment setting be to change from quiet with tones to monitor with tones?

[Avery93]

Originally Posted by zane018

Okay Thanks!! That helped a ton, so on the radio itself what would the key assignment setting be to change from quiet with tones to monitor with tones?

If you programmed the zone to AND optional signalling, you could set up one of the keys as monitor; but if you use the radio for any serious use (i.e. Fire/EMS), I would not do this. At some point you will forget to enter monitor mode, or it will somehow get disabled, and you will miss important traffic on the channels that have optional signalling enabled.

If you want to hear all traffic on a channel, and have the radio alert for your tones, but also have a way to mute the audio until your tones are received, then the best way to do that is have a separate paging only channel. Unfortunately, due to the "Audio Control" setting being zone-wide, you will have to put the paging only channel in a different zone.

[ramal121]

Originally Posted by Avery93

Unfortunately, due to the "Audio Control" setting being zone-wide, you will have to put the paging only channel in a different zone.

You can put both in the same zone but it will require disabling optional signalling of the monitor channel, but then it would not respond to a page. If you want the radio to beep on either, then different zones is required as per Avery93. Your choice.