Good afternoon everyone,
I have a Kenwood TK-7360HK. I haven’t mounted in it my truck yet, as I am unsure of its capabilities. I’ve spent a solid hour searching different sites and haven’t come up with anything yet. What can I do with this radio? Where would I find what channels to program into it? I don’t know anyone else with a radio, or anyone who is into them, but this is something I’d like to get into. I’m in Alberta if that helps at all.
I suspect you’re going to be a bit disappointed. Have you the VHF or there UHF versions. Who exactly do you want to talk to? They’re great radios - I’m quite a fan of Kenwood. However, it’s a business radio, so programming is done on a computer and transferred across. I can only speak from the UK perspective, but US licence rules are broadly similar.
Your options here are to put it on the business part of the spectrum, but of course, there’s no point if you want to speak to strangers, because they won’t want to talk to you, and without the licence you will not have an allocated frequency. If you want to talk to strangers, then you can study for a ham licence, pass your test, get a callsign and access their channels and repeaters - but it’s a lot of work, and not a quick thing. It also needs some study. Not huge amounts for the basic licence categories, but you need an interest in how radio works.
You could put it on the short range free channels and chat to people with those cheap walkie talkies - but technically, this is unlicensed operation. If you have a VHF one, you can talk to ships on marine band, but again - this is seriously against the law, and fines are likely.
What exactly are you hoping for? If it’s just you and not your bunch of friends, picking frequencies, even illegal ones would be pretty fruitless.
Thank you for the reply. I’m not too disappointed as I was given this radio. So it would make a bad ham radio, but a good one for the short range channels? I don’t think we have to be licensed here for those in Canada.
Most countries have free to air channels, but while loads of people use reprogrammed radios for these, the rules usually dictate no user programming, no detachable antennas and very low power. Clearly, it’s doubtful anyone would notice! Unless you are a ham, and have a proper callsign, issued by the Government, Hams will spot you, and often use their resources to track you down and pass the information to the authorities. They do NOT take to illegal operation very well. The radio is great, and would be able to operate happily on ham channels with the correct programming - hams like radios with tuning dials and gizmos. I like Kenwood radios, but using commercial radios is always a pain for ham bands, because their usual features are not easily accessible.