Kenwood PKT-23 portables
Posted
#305002
(In Topic #281048)

Donor
What's the programming software capable of?
The head of maintenance of the retirement village I live at said that he wants to purchase some new Kenwood PKT-23 radios to use on their existing repeater system. I do know that these radios have 99 pre-programmed frequencies installed at the factory and a simple way to program them from the front panel. None of these frequencies will work on our existing UHF repeater. Of course I will need to have a different frequency for transmit and receive. Does anyone know if the existing software will make it possible for me to reprogram these particular radios to our existing licensed repeater frequencies?
Posted

Donor
Posted

Donor
I did get a reply from a dealer that appears to solve my issues. The solution was on this site with the KPG-172D download. The 'secret sauce' here is to select the LMR version of the PKT-23. When you do that the software will allow you to select a separate RX and TX frequency and PL tone that applies to our repeater. The next step will be to make sure we order the correct LMR version of the PKT-23 radios so they can be properly programmed for our system.
Another Update:
New PKT-23 radios were ordered and received, and I obtained a couple of old used ones as well. The quality of the radios are good and they are very light and small. The KPG-172 software works fine. The software won't write the desired frequency to the radios without erroring out. A dealer has been contacted but denies that there is an LMR version of this radio. No telling why there's software to program a radio that doesn't exist.
Thanks, Ron
Last edit: by sparky48
Posted

Donor
New PKT-23 radios were received from a dealer and the needed facility frequencies and sub audible tones were programmed into the radios and they work fine. Kenwood dealers are authorized to program these radios to frequencies that are NOT one of the preprogrammed 99 channels. I also bought 3 old used PKT's that were functional but the cases are pretty beat up. These radios have an over the air cloning mode and I thought that maybe I could just clone a dealer programmed radio to one of the stock used ones that I had. Unfortunately that did not work. When the cloning mode was initiated the dealer programed radios refused to transfer the channels to any other radios. It looks like the cloning function has been disabled. So at the moment there doesn't seem to be any way to program these radios (unless you are a dealer) to some other channel other than the 99 ones that are programmed into the radios when they are new.
Posted

Donor

Now, maybe someday Kenwood could make a firmware change and make this impossible. Kenwood does say that if you are not a dealer you can't do any programming to anything other than the standard pre-programmed 99 channels. We had to go thru a dealer to purchase a couple of radios for our repeater. Now with the older software it looks like I can do the programming myself.
Posted
Posted

Donor
Posted

Donor
Posted

Super Donor
Help! if the version 1.02 works. Will gladly pay for a copy.
Thank you!
Posted

Donor
Thank you in advance Woody
Posted

Donor

Posted

Donor
Posted

Super Donor
Posted

Donor
Last edit: by sparky48
1 guest and 0 members have just viewed this.