TK-931 General Infomation
The TK-931 series of radios are one of the best radio’s to put on the 900MHz Ham band. There have been several write up’s on the Kenwood TK-931’s but none that I felt covered the radio from top to bottom. Some of the information presented here was accrued from what I have learned in converting and repairing more than 350+ TK-931’s for the amateur radio 33cm band.
A Few Different Flavors of the TK-931
There are several different TK-931’s out there; all will work on the 900MHz Ham band. These radios can be found at hamfests, auctions, and online for around $25-$100 in unconverted form. They are easy to work on should anything in them fail-which is not very common! These radios are also very easy to program using freeware Windows based software. The receivers are bulletproof: receive sensitivity and noise immunity is outstanding when the modifications are performed in this guide. The TK-931’s all do the standard 25MHz split, and to those people who refuse to accept change, the 25MHz repeater split is a standard! They come in 30W versions and 15W versions and also have remote faceplate capability. There are 3 different models of the TK-931 to look out for.
1. TK-931HD- The "H" indicates the high power version of the radio- 30 watts output; the "D" indicates it has an alphanumeric display. This is by far the most common version in existence. They can easily be discerned from other versions by its long heat sink and the 12-amp rating on the nameplate on the back of the radio. The alphanumeric display is easy to tell the difference at a glance because it has a black horizontal line across the face of the display even with the radio off. This radio has 10 Systems with 10 Groups in each system- 100 total memories.
2. TK-931D- The "D" indicates that it has an alphanumeric display- it will have a black horizontal line across the face of the display even with the radio off. This is the 15-watt version of the radio; it is noticeably different because it has a short/small heat sink, and the 7-amp rating on the nameplate on the back of the radio. This radio has 10 Systems with 10 Groups in each System- 100 total memories. The display of this radio is the exact same as the TK-931HD.
3. TK-931- This is a plain TK-931- 15 watts output, numerical display only- no black horizontal line across the face of the display and a non-text display, it has a short/small heat sink and 7-amp rating on the nameplate on the back of the radio. This is the bare bones model of the series and has 6 Systems comprised of 4 Groups in each System- 24 total memories.
Front Panel Buttons- TK-931, TK-931D, TK-931HD
The front panel assembly consists of several buttons, which are common to all 3 models listed above, they are:
“POWER”- Powers On/Off the radio
“VOL”- Increases/Decreases the speaker volume
“SYS”- Scrolls Up/Down through each System
“GRP”- Scrolls Up/Down through each Group
“SCAN”- Scans though each System and the SELECTED Group in each System- i.e. the radio does NOT scan through every Group programmed in the radio just the selected Group in each System. On a TK-931HD and TK-931D you can only scan a maximum of 10 frequencies at any one time. On the TK-931 you can only scan 6 different frequencies at any one time.
“A”- The “A” button is programmable in Kenwood Burn. The “A” button is programmable to be 1 of 3 selections: 1. Horn Alert 2. Manual Relay 3. Scan Add/Delete