Clearing a Memory Channel on the Kenwood TM-V71A

It's been a fun past few days! I've made my first few contacts, and tested the range limits of my radio. I managed to hit a repeater (although with poor signal) that was about 17 km away from me. I'm not sure if that's normal or if I might have a high SWR, as I don't have an SWR meter yet.

Anyway, today I was trying to clear out memory channels on my Kenwood TM-V71A. According to the manual, you go into memory mode by pressing the MR button, tune to the channel you want to clear, power off the radio, then power on while holding the MR button. This should bring up a menu prompt asking if you want to clear the channel, and you press the tuning control to confirm.

I managed to do this for all but one of the channels that I wanted to clear. When I powered the radio on while holding the MR button, it would just turn on as normal, and not prompt me to clear the channel. After trying a few times, I realized that there was a reason it wasn't working, and this reason didn't seem to be mentioned in the manual. If you have both bands on the radio set to the same channel, it will not allow you to clear the channel.

The solution was to switch to band B by pressing its corresponding volume control knob, tune to a different channel, switch back to band A, and then go through the memory channel clearing procedure. This allowed me to clear the channel properly. It took me a few minutes to figure out though, as there is no indication by the radio or in the manual that this was the problem. When I Google searched about this issue, I couldn't find anything, so hopefully this helps someone with the same problem!

Finally Finished Setting Up

I've finally had a chance to set up all my radio equipment so that I can use it! I got my first contact this morning, and it was very exciting! The following are some pictures of my antenna setup and station.

Power Supply and License

Just a quick update to say that I bought a used power supply from someone I met at the local Hamfest last weekend, and I got my license from Industry Canada in the mail today! It arrived 8 days after taking my exam, so that's pretty speedy, as far as I'm concerned.

New Radio

I went to the local Hamfest today, and bought my first radio! I got a Kenwood TM-V71A dual band radio, and a dual band antenna. I also had fun meeting people and getting a look at the world of amateur radio. See below for my unboxing video. Note that I still need a power supply (but I have a sale lined up already), and still need a grounding rod to ground my antenna. I'm not on the air yet, but hope to be soon.