[chirp_devel] [PATCH] [TK-270] Allow programming Kenwood commercial UHF radios in the 70cm band. #4709

[Tom Hayward]

On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 6:43 AM, Pavel Milanes Costa <pavelmc at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you don't read the full driver, at the end there is a section with
> the specific limits for each radio the lib supports and all of it's known
> (to me and by the software)

Pavel,

I understood the existing code and intentionally rewrote the range to
support 440 MHz on all sub-models. I used min() for the low side of
the range, so that models that already span 440 are unaffected, but
models with higher sub-bands now are "valid" all the way down the 440
MHz.  This will allow testing of these models down to 440 MHz.

> I follow a policy of just modify the ones that I can confirm by my/others
> test, in your image I sport that you has a F1 version (see attached image,
> 450 to 470MHz as dealer states) and you have confirmed that it works down to
> 440, which is great.
>
> So the right change must be this (and not in the Kenwood_P60_Radio class):
>
> ================================
>
> @directory.register
> class TK360_Radio(Kenwood_P60_Radio):
>     """Kenwood TK-360 Radios"""
>     MODEL = "TK-360"
>     TYPE = "P0360"
>     VARIANTS = {
>         "P0360\x24\x00\x00": (4, 440, 470, "F1"),   # original 450-470
>         "P0360\x25\x00\x00": (4, 470, 490, "F2"),
>         "P0360\x26\x00\x00": (4, 490, 512, "F3"),
>         "P0360\x23\x00\x00": (4, 406, 430, "F4"),
>         }
>
> ===============================

I intentionally did not modify the VARIANT specifications. I left
these as-is, so that Chirp still reports the F1 model as rated for
450-470 in the settings pane, even though valid_bands is slightly more
permissive. I don't want to mislead the users about the capabilities
of their radio, but I do want to allow them to test their radios in
the 440 band.

>From the little reading I did about these radios, the Kenwood software
is happy to let you take them out of band (it warns you, but allows
it). If you take them too far out of band, the PLL will fail to lock
and will give you a warning beep. This is a pretty mundane failure
mode, so risk of allowing this in Chirp is low.

There might be a better way to do this, but I'd like to still have a
scheme where the factory frequency range is reported in the Settings
pane. This means not modifying the VARIANT spec (or maybe we could add
to it).

Tom