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TK890H behavior has me stumped

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LakeMan2

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Feb 21, 2014
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I am getting some strange behavior out of a TK-890H that I have not figured out yet.

I have a TK-890H with a remote basic head. I also have a TK-890 (low power version) with a remote full function head. With the 890H I get low TX volume (hard to hear on the other end). I hooked it up to my service monitor and using a phone app that outputs an audible tone, I output a 1kHz tone and hold it up to the mike and I get a very low deviation. I disconnect the mic head from the mic cable and plug the same mic cable into a RJ45 jig I made up that lets me inject a 1kHz tone from the service monitor. I get near full deviation in that case. The same mic and cable plugged into the TK-890 works just fine with the mic head and the jig. I also tried a different mic/cable on the 890H and it behaved the same.

Here is a little table of the FM deviation from the service monitor:

---------------------------------------------------- 890H -------- 890
Mic + audible 1kHz tone from phone --- 0.8kHz ------ 1.9kHz
1kHz @ 50mV tone into jig/mic cable -- 2.0kHz ------ 2.0kHz

The mic and the jig are using the exact same MIC/MICe wires. The stumper is that since the mic and jig are using the exact same wires, the TX deviation should be the same for the same AF tone/level but it is not. At least not for the 890H (obviously the 890 looks good). I don't think it is the mic/cable because it works on the 890. It may be either the head or the radio itself and I will swap things out to narrow it down. Still, from a technical perspective, I can't think of a reason why the jig works on the 890H but the mic head does not....

The obvious question is, any ideas?

Edit: Oh and I did check the 890H voltage out of the connector using the jig and I got 13.6V.


Thanks
 
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LakeMan2

Member
Joined
Feb 21, 2014
Messages
110
OK, I think I may have a bad basic head unit. While the mic SB pin measures 13.6V initially under load (PTT) it goes down to ~12.8V. I tried the rear 12 pin acc plug and it does not do any better. The other head unit only goes down to 13.3V under load. Of course I thought the SB pin was +/- 15%, so things should still work at 12.8V. I don't know, I still can't get any decent deviation using a mic on the 890H with the basic head unit.
 

LakeMan2

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Feb 21, 2014
Messages
110
Well I have just about settled on the fact that it was multiple issues. It does appear that I have one front paned that has a bad front mic port. A mic plugged into the front port has a low deviation. When plugged into the back acc plug, the mic works fine.

The 890H vs 890 appears to be an issue of max deviation programmed. In tuning mode the 890 had a much higher max deviation programmed. When I bumped up the max deviation on the 890H it got louder.

It looks like while the audio on these units is good, the mic volume is lower than I am used to (at least when received by my ICOM HTs). There does not appear to be a mic gain adjustment on these Kenwood's so it looks like I will just need to set the max deviation higher than the Kenwood spec if I need it "louder".
 
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