KMC-27 issues

[Pat]

The sheriff's department and a few of the village police departments within our county use TK-5710 mobiles with the KMC-27 microphone. After several months of usage the microphones have been tending to become unreliable and will cause the radio to unkey multiple times during a transmission unless the PTT button is pressed in very hard or pressed in a certain spot. We've also been experiencing the same issue during cold mornings/nights before the inside of the squad is warmed up.

I have been able to fix the issue in a few instances by taking the mic apart and reseating the pads around the PTT but a one of the mics continued to have the same issue even after reseating everything and was eventually replaced. Is this a common problem with these microphones or did we just end up with a bad batch of them that have faulty switches or something?

Thanks,

Pat

[mmckenna]

The only info I can find is a service bulletin from 2001 regarding a changed mic element. Since these are on 5710's, it's unlikely this applies!

It would be well worth contacting your Kenwood dealer and letting them know about this. Could be a component that was recently changed and they are not aware of the issue.

I know several years ago I had a similar issue with Icom HMN-100 microphones with the PTT switch failing. I still have a few of the replacement buttons from the last batch I bought.

[Pat]

Thanks for the reply. I'll let our vendor know about it and see what they have to say.

Pat

[cmpsa]

We bought a used Kenwood TK-5710 off of E-bay 2 years ago, us being the 2nd owner. We were just having the exact same issue. The palm mic is used so much, unless we squeeze the button hard, it keys up at first, and then it drops out by itself.

So we just got a brand new palm mic from our local Kenwood dealer last week & threw out the old one. Unsure how old it was, no date code on it.