In my humble opinion, the 7950, and its little brother the 7930, were
the best and simplest 2 meter rigs Kenwood ever made.
The TR7950 is a 45 watt radio. The TR7930 is 25 watts, and I think
also has fewer memory channels.
As with all other rigs from the mid 1980's, the tone board was an
optional accessory. Unfortunately now days, most people did not buy
the tone board when they bought the radio, so you rarely find a 7950
for sale with the tone board included.
There was no speech board option for the TR79... series. That didn't
come along until the FM25... series, which replaced the 79 series for
a very brief time in the late 80's. I don't know if there were design
issues, or just quality control issues, but more than one Kenwood
technician has told me that the FM25 series was a mistake that never
should have seen daylight. The radios in that series had a very high
failure rate. This is unfortunate, because that series included the
FM2570, which was the first 2 meter rig to offer a 70 watt power
output.
I own a pair of TR7950's, and one FM2530. Despite the convenience
provided by the speech in the FM2530, the 7950 beats it all over the
place as far as I'm concerned, especially in the receiver. The
receiver audio section of the FM25 series is very noisy. I base that
statement on having operated several radios from that series, not just
the one that I own.
The 7950 is simple to operate, it has push buttons which are clearly
tactile when they are pushed in or out, and it has the orientation
beep at memory channel 1. It also has key pad frequency entry right on
the front of the radio.
The down side of the 79 series today is that its native tone board,
when you can find one, only allows you to choose from 3 PL tones.
These tones must be set by removing the proper diodes from a string
before the board is installed. Once the 3 tones are programmed, they
are selected by using the first 3 numbers of the keypad in conjunction
with another button on the front of the radio.
My original 7950 that I bought new in 1984 has the stock Kenwood
board. The other, which I bought from a local friend in the mid 90's,
has an external PL board that was made by Communications Specialists.
This box has a rotary switch that steps through the 32 PL tones that
were standard at the time. In order to connect this external PL box, a
friend ran a cable from the connector for the stock Kenwood board,
through an already existing hole near the external speaker jack on the
7950. This pig tail terminates in a Molex connector which mates with a
plug that he installed on the cable from the PL box. That radio now
lives at my mother's house, and sees some use whenever I am there for
any length of time. My original TR7950 and the FM2530 are back up rigs
for my wife and me. They sometimes come out of the closet for use at a
public service event where more than an HT is required in order to be
heard. Besides, I love it when another ham walks up at one of those
events and says, "What the heck is that thing?"
Mike Duke, K5XU
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