Kenwood THD7E Notes

Kenwood THD7e NOTES

Back in Summer of 2000 G4APL purchased two Kenwood THD7E 144/430 FM Dual Bander handhelds with built in TNC (Terminal Node Controller) Software version was version 2.0.

Using this with PaKeT DOS terminal program on a very old laptop that had to load the program off a floppy drive as it did not have hard drive.
A great time was had on Packet Radio when the family was on holiday in Cumbria North West England.
Gaining access to the local NetRom Node and working back to the Surrey Hills using a Mixture of NetRom radio and worm-hole links.

Further tests was to use the two hand helds in APRS mode, just to send SMS type message over the 2 metre Amateur Radio band between G4APL and daughter 2E1PAL.

The OLD man G4APL fingers are very slow typing messages compared to the speed of 2E1PAL

Other tests was to connect the Handheld up to a WIN98 PC running SV2AGW packet engine with the TCP/IP snap-in driving the Hand Held's TNC in Kiss mode.
The RF speed being set to 1200bd or 9600bd access the TCP/IP server in Caterham gb7cip.ampr.org. GB7CIP MB7NCR
It was found that the TNC kept locking up.

Having seen the work by Henk PE1DNN during the early part of 2001 with regards to 'Long UI packet problem in APRS'.
Our two THD7e's were sent to Kenwood to have the software upgrade carried out on them.

The THD7e are still used with a Laptops running PaKet6.2 with Windows XP/Win7Pro in XP-Mode or DOS and a Duel Band 2 metre 70cm mobile whip stuck on a tin baking tray or a co-linear mounted against a window..
When away operating /portable over the past 12 plus years. De Paul G4APL

UK 2Metre 12.5kHz FM Narrow Packet frequencies from November 2014
144.800 MHz 1200bd aprs
144.925 MHz 1200bd TCP/IP access
144.9375MHZ 1200bd AX25/BBS/DX cluster access
144.950 MHz 1200bd BBS access

The 2 Metre and 70cm node access points in the Caterham On The Hill Surrey area support AX25 (Amateur X25) and TCPIP routing
                                                                                                                     Bandwidth
MB7NCR-2 CATHAM 1200baud 144.9375MHz Vertical co-linear                  FMN (Narrow)
GB7CIP-9 CRNODE 9600baud 432.625MHz Horizontal Beam 295 degrees  FM (Wide)
GB7CIP-7 CRNODE   1200baud 432.675MHz Vertical co-linear                     FM (Wide)
GB7CIP-8 CRNODE   1200baud 433.625MHz Vertical Beam 295 degrees      FM (Wide)
GB7CIP-10 CRNODE 9600baud 439.950MHz Horizontal Beam 305 degrees   FM (Wide)

HOW To Configure the Kenwood THD7e for AX25 Packet Radio
It is expected that you have the following
Kenwood THD7e Handheld or another Kenwood TNC enable radio e.g.TM-D710E
PG-4V Connection Serial Cable (Or a compatible cable)
USB<>Serial Adaptor

You may need an aerial socket adaptor to connect to and external aerial.
Be very careful when attaching this to the Kenwood THD7e socket as twisting it could cause the connection to the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) to become open circuit.
You will end up with a very deaf receiver.

It is assumed that you are familiar with the operation of the Kenwood THD7e and the menu system.

The Kenwood THD7e can be configured to operate on 2metres or 70cm's transmitting and receiving 1200baud or 9600bd signals.

In this example we are going to configure the handheld to operate packet on 2metres at 1200bps.

Configuring the Kenwood THD7e
With the unit powered on.
Select Dual
Select A/B so that 144.9375MHz is selected
Select Dual So that only 144.9375 is displayed.

Press menu key
using the Up/Down arrows
Select APRS 2-D Right Arrow/Up/Down as required
Select PACKET SPEED 1200bps (1200bpd or 9600bps on 70cms)

Once Set Set your callsign
Up Arrow to Select APRS 2-1
MY CALL
Enter your Callsign-SSID as required
Right Arrow
e.g.
M0###

Now we need to assign the Data Mode to the 2metre band
Select menu
RADIO 1-4-1
TNC
Right Arrow
Up/Down to Select Band A (2m) (Band B for 70cm)
DATA BAND = A

You will now have a D to the right of the Frequency display/
e.g. 144.9375 D

Now you are ready to monitor
APRS and DXCluster alerts on the Kenwood THD7e.
Press TNC key once Will put it into APRS/DXCluster mode.
at the top of the screen will be displayed
tnc

Power off the TNC
Connect your
PG-4V Connection Serial Cable
USB<>Serial Adaptor
to the Kenwood THD7e and to the PC/Laptop

G4APL uses the PaKet 6.2 program to configure and control the Kenwood THD7e

Power on the PC/Laptop then the Kenwood THD7e
Press the TNC key twice, so that you have at the top of the screen
tnc packet

After following the instructions to configure PaKet 6.2 program and the serial port.

Connect to your local node. i.e. Refer to the list above)
e.g.
C MB7NCR-2

Configuring PaKet 6.2 is detailed under the Kenwood TS2000e Notes for various operating systems.

Paul has put a copy of his PaKet Configuration files, autoexec.scp and a connect script via this link PaKet62 Configuration files that he has used in the past

Configuring a Kenwood THD7e G4APL-1 attached to a Raspberry Pi /dev/ttyUSB0
interface using the Kiss interface (AX25/NetRom/IP)
APLRPI

As a base Paul used N1URO Raspberry Pi URONODE issue
with his own rc.ax25 scripts.

Working Example

cat rc.kissonthd7e
#/usr/local/etc/ax25/rc.kissonthd7e
# for use with Kenwood thd7e
stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 speed 9600
echo "switch TNC Off and On TC 1 and TC O"
echo -en "TC 1\015" > /dev/ttyUSB0
/bin/sleep 2
echo "switch Packet TNC on default params and wait 10 second to start up"
echo -en "TC 0\015" > /dev/ttyUSB0
/bin/sleep 10
echo "XFLOW Off use SW Flow Control"
echo -en "XFLOW OFF\015" > /dev/ttyUSB0

echo -en "PACLEN 0\015" > /dev/ttyUSB0
/bin/sleep 1
echo -en "TX 30\015" > /dev/ttyUSB0

# PPERSIST DWAIT Not required as for DAMA networks
#echo -en "PPERSIST OFF\015" > /dev/ttyUSB0
#echo -en "DWAIT 0\015" > /dev/ttyUSB0
/bin/sleep 2
echo -en "KISS ON\015" > /dev/ttyUSB0
/bin/sleep 2
echo -en "RESTART\015" > /dev/ttyUSB0
echo "KISS is ON ..."
exit

Extract from rc.ax25
./rc.kissonthd7e
kissattach -m 256 /dev/ttyUSB0 rf1 44.131.###.###
kissparms -p rf1 -r 128 -s 10 -l 20 -t 300

Testing the Kiss configuration
rf1: fm G4APL-1 to IDENT ctl UI^ pid=F0(Text) len 102 19:46:16
0000 Apple and Raspberry Pie Caterham [IO91WH] Experimental Node User
0040 Access to AX25/IP DX Cluster Networks

Heard on MB7NCR node
v144: fm MB7NCR-2 to IDENT ctl UI^ pid=F0(Text) len 127 19:55:45
0000 !5177.8N\00000.01W CatRad Network User Access to AX25 BBS DX
0040 cluster WorldWide Convers[44.131.244.1]Caterham Surrey [IO91WH]
v144: fm MB7NCR-2 to IDENT ctl UI^ pid=F0(Text) len 127 20:07:45
0000 !5177.8N\00000.01W CatRad Network User Access to AX25 BBS DX
0040 cluster WorldWide Convers[44.131.244.1]Caterham Surrey [IO91WH]
v144: fm G4APL-1 to IDENT ctl UI^ pid=F0(Text) len 104 20:14:24
0000 Apple and Raspberry Pie Caterham [IO91WH] Experimental Node User
0040 Access to AX25/IP DX Cluster NetworksîS
v144: TX Delay: 330 ms

Connecting from MB7NCR-2 to G4APL-1 Raspberry Pi Node
g4apl@gb7cip.ampr.org:/uronode$ c v144 g4apl-1
link setup (v144)...
*** connected to G4APL-1
[URONode v2.3] - Welcome to
Caterham Apple and Raspberry Pie Node
Experimental node. Locator IO91WH
Kenwood THD7e heldheld in use
15-17.12.2014 rebuilt with the URONODE RPI Image as a base. Testing
Note: Connect requires callsign-ssid to be entered i.e. C GB7CIP-0 C GB7BA-0

To connect to the Main CatRad server C GB7CIP-5 and login if requested.

Enter I for Information. BBS for full service AX25_BBS. DX for DX_Cluster
Enter ? for command list.
i.e. Enter CONV to enter amprnet realtime WWC Chat Sever

This makes an Interesting experimental node setup.

Second System build APLPIE.
Took memory card image of the above configuration and started the revised build.

Now the next thing I need to do, is to connect miniature Wi-Fi USB Dongle
and set up a tunnel back to GB7CIP over the local remote 4G/Wi-Fi network.

Once I have learnt how to Configure the WiFi Dongle and Raspberry Pi in Command mode.
Wi-Fi now manually configured with static IP address and working as required.

Next task is to get the connection to the remote VPN server. That was a struggle as Paul is not using openvpn.
Now have the VPN up and can ping the GB7CIP server LAN interface.
Now to get the UDP Tunnel though the VPN and the NetRom link up (now working)
Now THD7 loosing serial contact during configuration - being investigated.
Got around the problem by running thd7e script/kissattach,kissparms again after the system has run all the scripts. Though still need to solve the cause.
The APLPIE Node now connects to GB7CIP gateway via the VPN for Connections via
NetRom over the 3G/WiFi mobile Broadband network from a remote location.

Access to the IP amprnet, AX25, Netrom and local rf1 144.9375MHz all working via the WiFi/3G mobile broadband internet link (powered for five hours by it's own battery).

Paul takes this portable Packet Node away with him.(updated 4 June 2015)

Will be more compact setup when Paul upgrades his September 2012 256Mb rpi to the latest
version 2 1GB 4port USB Raspberry Pi. Doing away with the powered four port hub.

Click this link for Henk's PE1DNN Kenwood THD7e notes
PE1DNN THD7 Reports in Adobe PDF format

Hope the above is useful to you.
Paul G4APL
Reviewed 25.6.2024

TheSkywaves

Kenwood THD7e NOTES