GE Quest Railroad Clean Cab VHF (148-174Mhz) Radio 12R Series II 50W Train

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Kitn1mcc

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for the price there not bad to add to the shack. i know a maintainer who used to work on those. there not the best built rig
 

n7maq-1

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That is a Kenwood TK-790 RF PCB. (look at the J72 P/N) so it will be good for RX probably even down into the 2 meter band.
RX is .25uv (-119dBm) for 12dB SINAD.

Jim
 

iMONITOR

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That is a Kenwood TK-790 RF PCB. (look at the J72 P/N) so it will be good for RX probably even down into the 2 meter band.
RX is .25uv (-119dBm) for 12dB SINAD.

Jim

Thanks for the info Jim! I never did buy one of these, although it's still tempting. Just seems like a cool thing to have in the shack. :geek:
 

radioman2001

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Quote"
The original 12R model was a Harmon unit, which GE got when they purchased them.

Yes that's true we have few of the anchient ones floating around that we took OOS.
Radio is definitly a Kenwood package inside, and we have about 200 of them. Based on the photos from fleabay these were made in 2012, and one of the photos shows the remote version insides and not the display model. They made 3 versions that I know of, and we never did figure out how they were going to make a control head that did 400+ channels using the same old Spectra CC 99 chan AAR interface.
The radio portion of the 12RII has very little issue, but the use of a hobbist CPU to interface to the custom display head is. They easily get glitched, and constantly show errors that then need reflashing of the 2 Rabbit-Core processors. Unfortunately we bought about 50 of them for half price after another RR rejected them, and I won't name names. The plus side is can you add frequencies outside the RR band to a number of HOME channels like the old Spectra CC had.
BTW these units do NOT come with NXDN unless optioned for them with an add on board unlike the R12-III that uses a newer Kenwood radio package with built in NXDN. They do both wide and narrow band.
My issue with the replacement the 12R-III is that you have to program the radio first with channels, scan etc using the Kenwood software and then program the head with the 12RIII software. Reminds me of the Syntor-X9000 where you program the radio and head separately. Also still uses a hobbyist processor, just a newer version.
Both II and III's use a generic switching supply that runs anywhere from 72/36 volts down to 12 volts, that is very stable and has little issues. The 4-pin plug has ability for 72/36 and 12 using different pins.
Original price for these was about $3400.00 in 2009. I don't particularly like them because of the firmware problems, plus there is no public support for software or more importantly the firmware! The software itself is a disaster with you sometimes having to constantly reboot a true serial computer at times just to connect. You will need a special programming board (J tag) if the radio has firmware below a certain level. After that it will take the firmware by serial port.
One final thing don't ask for software or firmware.
 
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iMONITOR

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From the seller in my original post:

Description :

GE Quest Railroad Clean Cab radio, model number 12R Series II. These 50W VHF (148-174Mhz) units are programmable radios that are pre-loaded with all AAR radio frequencies and also have 432 channel capacity. Units are in great shape and come complete with programming cable, programming software and DC power cord. Units will require a 12 volt DC power source capable of handling up to 50 watts of power. If you have any questions, please contact us.

Yes, they are great radios and we have sold quite a few already with no complaints at all.
 
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