I'm a new General HAM and I was given as a gift a low use Kenwood TH-225A Portable that was supposed to be in fine working order. It came with a Quantum Ham Battery Pack with the prewired battery adapter for the 225A, original lapel speaker and microphone, and 12V car cigarette lighter adapter. I charged the battery pack and powered everything up. It looks clean and was able to enter frequencies and everything appears to be working correctly except the volume. I have to turn the volume to max and place my ear up to the speaker to hear anything. I then plugged in the remote microphone and it does the same thing that the volume has to be turned all the way up to barely hear anything. Thinking maybe a power issue I unplugged it from the Quantum battery pack and plugged it into a 12V cigarette lighter adapter and it does the same thing. Anyone have any experience with the Kenwood TH-225A that could steer me in the right direction for fixing the problem?
Kenwood: Kenwood TH-225A Low Audio
- Thread starter W9WTC
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MTS2000des
5B2_BEE00 Czar
Being that the radio is 25 plus years old, my guess is there might be a bad coupling capacitor to the audio amp that has gone open. I searched but could not find a service manual for this radio online.
Manual
I found a service manual on ebay and purchased it. It will be shipped soon and I will post a schematic or whatever is needed when I receive it to try and figure out this problem being I'm a new HAM.
Thanks
I found a service manual on ebay and purchased it. It will be shipped soon and I will post a schematic or whatever is needed when I receive it to try and figure out this problem being I'm a new HAM.
Thanks
MTS2000des
5B2_BEE00 Czar
Good luck. Those Kenwood radios were built fairly well, but they are packed full of parts. The one thing you should be extremely careful of when opening it up is the ribbon flex that connects the radio's front cover CPU/control board to the radios' RF circuitry.
IIRC it has a header that plugs into to a ZIF style connector but as these type of flex cables age they can become brittle and break, especially at the 90 degree right angles they are folded into. Repairing them are impossible and I doubt Kenwood still has them available as a replacement part.
That being said, have fun.
IIRC it has a header that plugs into to a ZIF style connector but as these type of flex cables age they can become brittle and break, especially at the 90 degree right angles they are folded into. Repairing them are impossible and I doubt Kenwood still has them available as a replacement part.
That being said, have fun.
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