Kenwood 5000 VHF converter

[vinrads]

Hi I see there is some one in the USA selling these VHF converters for the Kenwood 5000 ,they say the coverage is 108 mc/s to 175 mc/s , is it worth spending well over £250 for one of these , your thoughts please Mick.

[Biggles]

Seems a lot for a converter. I would tempted to spend the money, (or far less), on a separate scanning receiver to do the job. I assume it's not a transverter you are describing, which probably would be worth the money.
Alan.

[Synchrodyne]

As I recall, the conventional wisdom of the time – late 1980s – was that the VHF converter options for the Kenwood R5000 and JRC NRD525 were not brilliant, for example suffering from birdies. This I heard from the dealer from whom I bought my NRD525, and I also read about it elsewhere. I have a vague notion that the problems were worse in the NRD525 case, which might have used unscreened plug-in boards, whereas I think that Kenwood used a screened VHF unit. At the time, the “answer” for VHF-UHF communications reception, albeit an expensive one, was said to be the ICOM R7000.

Looking through some old documents on hand, I see that in 1987, the US list price for the Kenwood VC20 VHF adaptor for the R5000 was $199.95, and it was probably selling somewhat below this. The R5000 itself then listed at $949.95, but a typical dealer price was $799.00. Against that, and assuming that what is on offer is NOS of the VC20 (perhaps Kenwood made too many of them), £250 does seem, well, somewhat escalated.


Cheers,

[John KC0G]

From the Universal Radio catalog in the summer of 1996, the list price of the R5000 was $1249.95 and discount price was $1049.95. The VC-20 VHF converter was selling for $199.95.

First of all I would want to know that the R5000 is in good condition. PLL instability due to the use of a hydroscopic potting compound, and mechanical bounce of the keys are two well-known problems.

[G6Tanuki]

What would you intend to use such a converter for?

Apart from civil-airband and radio-amateurs there's not much AM/FM/SSB usage of that band-segment any more: all the onetime "professional" two-way users have gone digital.

If you want to listen to 2-metre-band amateurs then a modern amateur-band-only, narrow-bandwidth converter with serious front-end-selectivity will give far better results than any 1980s-era wideband design.

[vinrads]

I was thinking just to extend the coverage of the Kenwood the Aircraft freq is about the only ones I would be interested in thank's . Just out of Interest which rx would you recommend to receive up to the UHF band Mick.

[Synchrodyne]

The Kenwood VC-20 VHF converter does look to have a somewhat wideband front end:



Of similar vintage to the Kenwood R5000 is the Icom R7000 VHF-UHF receiver, which goes up to 1000 MHz with a fully tuned RF input, and also covers 1025 to 2000 MHz with an inbuilt wideband converter. I suspect though that the R7000 is not cheap to buy today, and I am not sure how well it would have travelled, or how difficult repair and restoration might be. Mine still works well, but then it has had but little use for the last 15 years or so. The power supply ran very hot from new, which I understand is normal, and a point of possible concern. Unlike say the JRC NRD525, I don’t think that one can use an external 12 V DC power supply to get around the problem. (Although in the NRD525 case I did that to circumvent a noisy transformer.)


Cheers,

[Radio Wrangler]

That little lot ought to be quite rich in birdies.

From an amateur's perspective, it will be an overpriced underperformer. It's neat that it fits in your set, but the price paid for neatness in both money and performance is terrible.

From an airband point of view (my day job, tomorrow, is working on the design of an airband radio - one to be manufactured and bolted into aircraft's instrument panels) it would probably be OK, but it has a band break right in the middle of the COM band, just where you don't want one.

You could buy an airband radio for under £250 and not need to ship from outside the UK. Quite a lot of 2 metre transcievers had extended RX coverage covering the airband AND they had AM demod for it. Some of these are rather elderly and that means cheapish. My TM-V7E transceiver that lived in the old Rangie has extended coverage on both its 145MHz and 435MHz bands. A quick google found one had been offered for £178 on an auction site in good order (oddly enough in the same town as Waters & Stanton) So such things are out there.

You could build your own converter to go into the R5000 antenna port at 20-30MHz

You could build your own airband receiver.

You could pick up an ex-aircraft set. There is an edict out that all aircraft must be equipped with new 8.33kHz channel spacing radios by 2020, and there is subsidy money on offer to aircraft owners (who are still smarting from having to buy new radios not that many years ago to have more protection from the broadcast band next door to them).

As most of the ground services are staying where they are an old 25kHz set will still find as much to listen to, but they are just going to cease being legal in aircraft in preparation for changes in the more distant future.

David

[g4aaw pete]

I accidentally got a VIC20 last week. It came installed in an R5000 which I purchased.
It performs as expected, and includes various birdies. I wouldn't go to a great deal of trouble to purchase this option though.
My problem now is finding a CW filter at the right price the HF part of the receiver.

Retards
Pete

[M0AFJ, Tim]

Why not look at the SDR Play?, an amazing bit of kit. OK, it's not `old school' but for what you get for the money...