[Kenwood] TM 251a Mobile Transceiver Problem( for anyone owning this model, please read and advise.)

Sun, 5 Jan 2003 17:20:23 -0600

Between us, my friend and I own three of subject radios purchased new a
number of years ago just after they were placed on t he market. All
developed the same problem after about a year ( you know, just after the
warranty expired!) which I will describe as best I can: All radios have
amber backlit displays with black LED's or somesuch device constituting the
displayed data. The individual display elements all go into motion in an
unsychronized fashion and blinking on and off. It does matter if a
particular data info readout is turned on or off, everything moves and
blinks, then sometimes some will just stay off for a while and other just
keep going in motion. This erratic display phenomena does not affect any of
the radio's settings including frequency, and they continue to operate
perfectly except for the display. However, this problem makes them mostly
useless, since one can never tell exactly what is or is not being displayed.
At first, this happened on an intermittent basis, but over time grew
steadily worse, until it happened the instant the power was switched on.
Sometimes a sharp blow would stabilize things for a brief while, but as time
went on this temporary measure became less and less effective. It does not
appear to be related to temperature, or vibration for that matter.
Sometimes, the display will stabilize for a few hours, but sooner or later
goes back to the same exasperating condition. Yes, I called KW more than
once, and they declared they had never heard of such a phenomena with this
specific radio. Not sure I believe them though. I finally disassembled one
display looking for a bad connection or solder joint. Found nothing. Had
heard that the previous model, the TM241a, typically had display problems
when a display connector had solder joints go bad. However, I also own a
241, and find the displays are not very similar in construction, at least to
my limited ability to make that determination. These radios cost us about
450ドル new and are obviously worth much less now, and probably nothing with
this problem unresolved. I paid one tech 50ドル to repair if he could, and it
helped for about a week, then started again. Upon quizzing him, found he
had disassembled the display and simply cleaned the plastic face with
alcohol. This is what led me to try it myself, with same results. I do not
understand how this display works as I could not find a connecting cable.
I did find at the heart of it an opaque plastic looking materiel that lays
directly in contact with what looks to be the same type connections as one
sees on a computer card edge connector. Cleaning both the plastic and the
edge connectors does not seem to permanently fix the radio. Oh I have found
numerous technicians who are more than happy to take a look at 65ドル an hour
with no gurantees. I am reluctant to spend much on them given that even if
in perfect condition, they are not worth a lot. On the other hand, if I
could get a good fix, doubt I would want to dispose of them. Reason for
this long discourse, is to see if anyone else out there in the KW world
owning this radio has experienced this problem, and can provide some helpful
information relative to it. Thanks for your time in reading this. Bill/k3yc