Chirp support for Kenwood TK-280 and family.

For the users of the Kenwood TK-280 radios: Pavel (CO7WT) is starting to develop a Chirp driver for this radios, if you have one and what it supported on Chirp keep reading.

Pavel has noted that he found outstanding similarities with the family/series 60G driver he build some time ago for Chirp, so, chances are good for the support for this radio and the entire family of radios supported by the OEM software (TK-780/880/280/380/980/981/480/481)

But, he don't has a radio at hand to work with: he needs some willing users of this radios to collaborate with him to meet the goal: make Chirp support this radio. (He is the co-author of the BTECH driver for Chirp, it has experience working remotely)

The help is mainly on taking serial logs to reverse-engineering the communication protocol, answering his questions, make some special test to figure out radio memory properties and beta testing the driver.

All coordination must be done via the Chirp's CMS in this link, there you can follow the development of the driver.



Chirp is a CHIRP is a free, open-source tool for programming your amateur radio. It supports a large number of manufacturers and models, as well as provides a way to interface with multiple data sources and formats

 

Glad to see writers of software like this willing to continually help the ham community.

Scanner users need software like this that is free.

 

Additionally; Chirp for the Motorola APX and XTS lines would be nice.

 

It would be nice, but the the XTS and APX radios are so advanced compared to Kenwood's, I think it would take too much time and effort.

Kenwood commercial radios are very simple to program and it is probably very easy to make a driver for CHIRP.

 

FreeSCAN?

 

moto maxtrac too ??

 

Funny, a word that used to describe a bad thing, chirp, is now a good thing. Technology marches on !

 

Kenwwod version for the TK-280: KPG-49D.
I have copies that can be modified, as well as codeplugs for the TK-280 radio, as I have one in daily use.
I do not currently use CHIRP, so I have nothing to go by concerning this software, and do not work in software, only the RF engineering field.
If interested, please Email me here: AECRADIO1@GMAIL.COM, or call/text: 480.828.1927
I will b happy to assist you with your endeavors in any way I am able.
73! Ernest, KA9UCE

 

That will be the day of real news.

 

CHIRP has made it so easy to program your radios...i have several ht's that use chirp. Also have icom and yaesu which use their own software.
I think one needs to program radio manually just in case . you might not have a computer in the field

 

Wonder if there's a chance to do the same for a TK-270? That would make me happy.

 

If you read the website, you'd see that CHIRP already supports the TK-270. http://chirp.danplanet.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home

The TK-270 are good radios. Really like the FPP capability. Now if I could only find a TK-270G (narrowband). Just for note, any Kenwood commercial radios with a model that ends in G are narrowband 2.5khz capable. Non-G radio are wideband 5khz only

 

Sadly the serial protocol that use Motorola is a proprietary (aka patented/copyrighted) one, so support in Chirp for Motorola radios is unlikely if the protocol is keep under the patent.

73 Pavel CO7WT.

 

Hi Ernest,

Right now we are in need to test the developer driver for download as posted here (http://chirp.danplanet.com/issues/4395#note-7) to get a Chirp formatted image of some of this radios to keep going the reverse-engineering efforts for the memory data.

We need beta testers for the actual dev driver and the forthcoming ones.

I'm the author of the Chirp's driver for the TK-26x/27x/36x/76x/86x radios G and non G models and this radio (TK-280) comm protocol is almost the same, as well as the memory layout but I need some images of this radios made with Chirp, because the OEM software make some tricks to not read the areas it doesn't need and the I get just chunks of data and not the whole memory image, and yes, there is info these areas.

73 Pavel CO7WT

 

I believe the software 'ignores' locations that ar not being actively programmed as 'active', when the user is setting up functions and options.
Firmware dependent as well, as to what options are actually available on a specific model.
The firmware of myTK-280, is CE7A.
My TK-2140 'test' radio has version 2.13 software, and firmware version of: B806.
Different models, but the firmware decides what options are available for use with that model radio, as we all know.