During the years of use of my Kenwood TH-D74 I noticed that the battery indicator is a little bit confusing.
I never knew precisely how much "juice" I had in the battery from what the radio show on the LCD indicator.
So, being a brave ham I decided to put some clips on the battery contacts and make some measurements and correlate them with that little icon on the upper right side of the screen.
Under 7.2V:
7.2V - 7.4V
7.4V - 8.0V
8.0 V - 8.4V
Between 7.2 and 7.3V, the battery indicator is changing the colour from red to green.
The observation was made with the voltage going from 8.4V to 5.5V - the lowest voltage for which the radio is still working.
Having the radio already connected to my smart power supply, I thought it is the right occasion to make some measurements for the current draw in various configurations.
Here they are...
-GPS OFF
-Battery Save OFF
-SQ ON
-TNC OFF
VFO A: 160 mA
VFO B: 168 mA
VFO A + VFO B: 205 mA
VFO A + VFO B, SQ ON, vol@1/2: 270 mA
FM Radio ON: 210 mA
SD Rec ON: +15 mA
GPS ON: +30 mA
TNC ON: +~ 2mA
What about when transmitting?
Well, here they are, also:
EL (Extra Low)
VHF: 465 mA
UHF: 401 mA
L (Low)
VHF: 775 mA
UHF: 708 mA
M (Medium)
VHF: 1060 mA
UHF: 990 mA
H (High)
VHF: 1868 mA
UHF: 1920 mA
I want to stress out that these values are determined against my radio and can vary on others.
