[Kenwood] TS-850 Age Determination

Sun, 7 Mar 2004 16:08:55 -0500

Paul,

There has been speculation that the following formulae would yield the year
and month of manufacture.  There is, however skepticism that the formula is
true.  Your question is one that is often asked on this reflector.  Even
Kenwood has refuted that there is any logical basis in the serial number
r�gime for telling the age of one of their transceivers.

The most prevalent formula is: The first digit of the serial number minus
two denotes the year, i.e., number 301xxxxx would be 3 - 2 = 1.  Depending
on the radio vintage this could mean 1981, 1991 or 2001.  The next two
digits denote the month the unit was made.  01 = January, 02 = February, 03
= March...  For a TS-870, which we know were not built in 1991 we could
assume a date of January, 2001 for serial number 301xxxxx.  Again, this is
still purely conjecture at this point.

A TS-850S with a serial number of 411xxxxx may have a manufacturing date of
November, 1992.  We do know that TS-850S's with a 4 million S/N probably had
bad DSS chips installed right at the factory.  The serial numbering scheme
may be better adapted to following problems and updates, rather than
manufacturing date's, or age determination.  Keeping track of problems and
updates would be much more important in my way of thinking.

Recently, we were acquainted with a search engine for the Kenwood archives,
which I encourage you to try.
The URL is: http://www.w9wze.org/ReflectorSearch/SearchReflectorForm.php
Good luck searching the archives.  The search engine is easy to use, and
works great.  There may be some interesting threads on serial numbers.

73 de n8csp kn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Pagel" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 11:38 AM
Subject: [Kenwood] TS-850 Age Determination

Does anyone have a rule of thumb for determining the approximate age of
a TS-850? I suspect there might be a way to do this using the
transceiver's serial number.

Tnx es 73,

Paul / N1FB

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