Weird kit from Kenwood...

Kenwood had some neat kit that they were experimenting with in the past. There's this thing:

The Kenwood VC-H1

Kinda looks like one of those portable TVs doesn't it? It was for portable SSTV.  The camera on top was a 270k CCD that could be turned 360 degrees and detaches for connection of an external video source. The LCD screen was 1.8". This unit was capable of storing up to 10 pictures in its memory and it was compatible with 8 different SSTV modes. Even though the manual says that, it can only send in two modes; Robot 36 or "Fast FM". The latter requires a 9600 baud connection with your transceiver. The manual lists 5 Kenwood transceivers that it works with in Fast FM mode, I suspect it would work with anything that can do 9600 baud though. It is capable of subtitling your pictures with your callsign. It can also automatically transmit every 3 minutes.

Pretty neat little device for someone who wanted to do portable SSTV. Put some AA's in, plug an interface cable into your HT, and go.



Then there's the Kenwood IP-100 "Illustphone"

If you do a Google search for this you'll end up with a bunch of pages talking about an ipod interface for your car or something. Rigpix claims it "allows transmission of alphabets, number symbols and pictures which are drawn on the pressure sensitive tablet." But there's nothing about transmission mode. Does this work in SSTV or some sort of FAX mode? Is that a thermal printer of some sort on the back of it? When were they sold and does anyone still use it? I may never know.









Kenwood also made the CD-10 Call sign Display.

I talked about that in an earlier post though. I'm kinda sad this didn't catch on. Just because it's neat and it was 20-30 years ago that we had the capability to have a callsign automatically transmitted. This is the sort of thing that D-star is only now making possible again. R & L actually has one of these for sale.




All pictures courtesy of RigPix.com
Used without express permission, I'll take them down if there's an issue though.
Oops, I was unintentionally linking directly to the pictures on their website, I thought I was hosting them on here when I pasted them in. Fixed that now.