Monthly Archives: March 2008

Warranty Repairs…

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I was able to run over to Ham Radio Outlet in Sunnyvale today at lunch and asked if they had any ideas.  We were going to try another cable (start with the cheapest link in the chain right?) but they only had default Kenwood cables and Mark has my serial adapter.  So… we tried my cable and laptop with the demo model in the case… and as I expected, it worked just perfectly.

So now we knew it was my radio, and after learning they don’t do any repairs in the shop, we went ahead and filled out the paperwork and they’ll ship it off to Kenwood since it’s still under warranty.  I asked if they had any estimates on how long it would take, and he simply said they’d call when it came in.

I may grab my old radio back from Mark this weekend if we meet up so I don’t have to give up this radio hobby cold turkey ;-)

Problems with my Kenwood TH-F6A and the data cable

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I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with my Kenwood TH-F6A over the past months, been using it more to get on the air recently. I even joined ARES, Santa Cruz County Amateur Radio Emergency Service. I’d listened to their nets occasionally over the years and after I heard Cap Pennell (KE6AFE) talking with someone about the new sign-up form, I figured I could easily both help with testing the form and get myself sign up at the same time.

But the bigger update is that I’m having radio troubles! I often am adding, changing, or re-ordering frequencies on this thing, and starting last night, my data cable is no longer working.

Programming CableAs I’ve mentioned previously I use MacMemoriesManager on my MacBook Air. It’s been working great all this time, but now the software keeps reporting that it can’t find the radio. First I tried a Menu Reset on the radio, then a VFO reset, and as a last resort I tried a full reset. Now I’ve got a blank radio and no way to program it via the cable!

If I get a few minutes tomorrow at lunch I’m going to try to run over to Ham Radio Outlet in Sunnyvale and see if they can take a look at it. I noticed that the double plug seemed like it was a bit firmer going in, so my guess is one of the small internal contacts inside the jack has bent out of position.