Kenwood NX-5000 problems, lacks, suggestions and improvements

[ke6yjc]

Memory Limitations

Seems rather limiting to have a maximum of 1500 records to store ID's, Status & Talkgroup information between MDC-1200, FleetSync, P25 & DMR. With respect to DMR the ID's for California there are almost 2000 alone.

Also in respects to DMR ID's once you put an ID in the Individual ID section you cannot manage them from the radio nor can you manually key in an ID if you wanted to page / private call another user. Seems rather limiting. Hope Kenwood can improve upon these features and maybe allow us to put more in the radio or store such information on the SD card?

Thanks,
Ted/KE6YJC

 

[rescue161]

The good far outweighs the bad in my opinion.

Boot-up time is amazing. It puts the XPR5550 to shame.

Multi-mode! It is awesome to have a "real" (not a CCR) radio that can do P25 and DMR as well as analog.

Well-constructed. The radio "feels" nice. My XPR5550 felt cheap and wiggly to me, but the NX-5800 feels rugged and tight.

Display is awesome. Full color and very easy to navigate items once you build your menu list.

Configuration options allow customization as compared to other brands.

Love the encryption/scrambling options. DES is standard. Analog inversion has the ability to put in any frequency between 2000-4098 Hz, so it works with Motorola XPR5550 and XPR7550 radios. Have not figured out a way to make them work with Motorola on DMR yet. AES is also available.

Now for the limited bad that I've found so far.

Not really a bad thing, but I was surprised to find an SO-239 connector on my UHF NX-5800. Most of the other manufacturers moved away from the SO-239/PL-259 years ago. I don't really mind, but I'd rather have at least an N-type.

Sort feature is desperately needed. It is extremely hard to generate a large codeplug from scratch without needing to make adjustments as you go along.

DMR could be made better with more contacts and a way to manage them, like ke6yjc mentioned. I'm not complaining too loudly because the price for the DMR upgrade was extremely affordable.

Audio on analog did seem a little low compared to DMR and P25, but a little tweaking brought it up. Still low, but not too bad.

All in all, I would HIGHLY recommend this radio!

 

[Colton25]

What did you do to tweak the audio for analog?

The good far outweighs the bad in my opinion.

Boot-up time is amazing. It puts the XPR5550 to shame.

Multi-mode! It is awesome to have a "real" (not a CCR) radio that can do P25 and DMR as well as analog.

Well-constructed. The radio "feels" nice. My XPR5550 felt cheap and wiggly to me, but the NX-5800 feels rugged and tight.

Display is awesome. Full color and very easy to navigate items once you build your menu list.

Configuration options allow customization as compared to other brands.

Love the encryption/scrambling options. DES is standard. Analog inversion has the ability to put in any frequency between 2000-4098 Hz, so it works with Motorola XPR5550 and XPR7550 radios. Have not figured out a way to make them work with Motorola on DMR yet. AES is also available.

Now for the limited bad that I've found so far.

Not really a bad thing, but I was surprised to find an SO-239 connector on my UHF NX-5800. Most of the other manufacturers moved away from the SO-239/PL-259 years ago. I don't really mind, but I'd rather have at least an N-type.

Sort feature is desperately needed. It is extremely hard to generate a large codeplug from scratch without needing to make adjustments as you go along.

DMR could be made better with more contacts and a way to manage them, like ke6yjc mentioned. I'm not complaining too loudly because the price for the DMR upgrade was extremely affordable.

Audio on analog did seem a little low compared to DMR and P25, but a little tweaking brought it up. Still low, but not too bad.

All in all, I would HIGHLY recommend this radio!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Colton25]

Have we confirmed that upgrading firmware will fix audio issues? My 5200 has 1.73 and the analog RX audio is so terrible I'm considering sending it back. I had a 2180 before this and the 2180's audio blows this out of the water. I also have a 5700 with 1.68 firmware and the audio seems to be fine using a external speaker.

Missing element to your information. Firmware Version.

FROM KENWOOD TECH SUPPORT:
Update to the latest firmware, V2.01. There was an audio bug in the previous release. Not sure if it affected analog but it did DMR.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[kd4efm]

2.01 is out, fixed several things, on k5 and k6 fixed Dmr deviation issue.

kd4efm Evans, sent using TapTALK on my HTC M9

 

[Colton25]

Did it fix anything with regular VHF analog? I've tried changing audio settings and it doesn't seem to be doing anything. To put this into perspective the audio sounds like it's coming out of a Baofeng radio.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[kd4efm]

Did it fix anything with regular VHF analog? I've tried changing audio settings and it doesn't seem to be doing anything. To put this into perspective the audio sounds like it's coming out of a Baofeng radio.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Wouldn't hurt to put it in there. I have not had any audio issues to say on my 5700, and I'm on analog more than p25, and have it set to wide band, and using a KMC-27B

kd4efm Evans, sent using TapTALK on my HTC M9

 

[Colton25]

I'm happy with the audio from the 5700, it's the 5200 that's the issue. Could this be a internal problem from the factory? It's hard to tell how poor other users audio performance is.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ke6yjc]

Has anyone else noticed micro scratches on their portable units? I was doing some FPP on my radio and noticed these...

 

[RK3AAG]

Did it fix anything with regular VHF analog? I've tried changing audio settings and it doesn't seem to be doing anything. To put this into perspective the audio sounds like it's coming out of a Baofeng radio.

RX audio is normal in mobile radios. But RX RQ doesn't work. No fix available and nobody here checked it and hit back. Try to switch a few different RX EQ profiles (like Low Boost / High Boost) and share your feedback. And the same request to others who really deal with these radios.

 

[RK3AAG]

Seems rather limiting to have a maximum of 1500 records to store ID's, Status & Talkgroup information between MDC-1200, FleetSync, P25 & DMR. With respect to DMR the ID's for California there are almost 2000 alone.

DMR UID capacity is absolutely OK. There is no need to put in radio all your network. It's crazy. You can group your radios in few fleets and program only needed ranges.

 

[RK3AAG]

The good far outweighs the bad in my opinion.

Could you please check RX EQ operation and sound in analog (compared with Moto)? I bet that you will be unpleasantly surprised.

Also +1 for RF connectors. Times of UHF / SO-239 gone 15 years ago. Kewnood must move to somthing esle. N Type is the best one, but BNC will work also. Hate mini-UHF due to self-loosening problem (even when you use Andew connectors).

 

[ke6yjc]

DMR UID capacity is absolutely OK. There is no need to put in radio all your network. It's crazy. You can group your radios in few fleets and program only needed ranges.

Well I would not put every ID in there, but I have put a few people in my contact list that I send Call Alerts (Kenwood : Page Function) to and that's all great, the bigger issue is that once you put a few ID's in the radio (on my NX-5300 K6) you loose the ability to manually enter any ID's to page one off people nor is there a way to add a new / edit contacts on the radio without launching the SLOW A** programming software, update the contacts and then re-write the dat file to the radio.

 

[kd4efm]

Well I would not put every ID in there, but I have put a few people in my contact list that I send Call Alerts (Kenwood : Page Function) to and that's all great, the bigger issue is that once you put a few ID's in the radio (on my NX-5300 K6) you loose the ability to manually enter any ID's to page one off people nor is there a way to add a new / edit contacts on the radio without launching the SLOW A** programming software, update the contacts and then re-write the dat file to the radio.

My version 14 apx software takes the same amount of time loading as does the D1. No winner there either....

kd4efm Evans, sent using TapTALK on my HTC M9

 

[kd4efm]

Well I would not put every ID in there, but I have put a few people in my contact list that I send Call Alerts (Kenwood : Page Function) to and that's all great, the bigger issue is that once you put a few ID's in the radio (on my NX-5300 K6) you loose the ability to manually enter any ID's to page one off people nor is there a way to add a new / edit contacts on the radio without launching the SLOW A** programming software, update the contacts and then re-write the dat file to the radio.

Okay, to go from USER LIST to MANUAL DIAL, press the option button (the circle under the menu key)
to toggle between LIST or MANUAL DIAL.

Then you can enter the ID you wish to page or send control commands to.

Hotkey and or menu/call/individual. this will work as long as you have manual dial enabled in the appropriate Personal Features setting.

EFM


* PS I have already worked with Ted on this in PM. Just updating this for everyone else to read.

 

[KJ4CYM]

This is a funky issue that seems to pop up on the NX-5300. If I have the radio on a channel, scan is turned off, and there has been no traffic for a while. When there is a transmission, the green light turns on, the MDC ID shows on the display, but there is no audio coming out the speaker! I literally have to change the channel over to another and then back to the original one, or turn scan on to get it to wake up and then it unmutes.

Is this an issue with the power-save mode or MDC signalling settings? It is a mixed-mode IDAS RX, analog TX channel. The firmware version is 1.73.00.

 

[kd4efm]

Need 2.01 to fix that.

kd4efm Evans, sent using TapTALK on my HTC M9

 

[KJ4CYM]

Gotchya... I'll email our dealer. What was the issue they fixed? I can't find any changelog of fixes documented anywhere.

 

[RK3AAG]

Issue # 8. NX5000 radios can't do RC4 encryption canpable with ADP, but younger brothers, like VP6000, VP600, VP400, can. Even VP5000 that uses NX5000's hardware can do that! Marketing limitation?

WTF?

 

[shmget]

I remember when the NX-5000 series came out, there was someone who said not to use RX AGC, and it certainly did cause some issues with readability. I tried it now that I have firmware 2.01, and it still makes the sound on LOW and HIGH setting sound very distorted. I turn off AGC and things sound ok. I just find there are some people on NXDN that it would be great to not be adjusting volume all the time.

What about TX AGC? I have that turned on, and no one has complained about my audio. Do most people keep it on or off?