By:N4MQU
Kenwood V71A
I hadn’t heard this feature talked about and I thought new and old hams alike may wish to hear about my recent experience with crossband. I set up crossband repeat so I could carry a hand held (HT)radio around my house and talk on the repeater with a decent signal. I did not like the signal I was producing from the HT. The radio I used is a radio I had in my Ford Flex and removed it because I hadn’t used it in awhile. I finally remembered that I could crossband repeat with it. The radio can stay in the ham shack and I could carry around the HT with me.
So how does it work. The radio has two VFO’s and you set one VFO on the simplex frequency you want to use and the other frequency you want to crossband to. You then tell the radio to crossband by selecting the menu and turning it to the crossband menu. Turn off the radio then turn it on buy holding the tone bottom and power button at the same time. When I first did this I had trouble. I could key the main radio but I wasn’t receiving the signal on my HT. I tried over and over again and finally noticed the + was on the simplex frequency. I removed it and pushed the tone button and keyed the HT. It worked! I could hear the repeater on the HT and the signal was clear!
Instructions for the V71A for crossband.
Are there any other radios that are being manufactured with this feature? *
*You will have to do your own research to make sure the radios have the features you need including crossband.
If you have experience with other radios that do crossband please email me at n4mqu73@gmail.com