There’s an option on the Kenwood TS-2000 (and maybe on other Kenwood ham radios including the new TS-590) called Auto Mode. It’s an option that will set the Mode (CW, USB, LSB, etc) for you automatically based on the frequency that the radio is tuned to. By default, in the US model I have from 2008, the only “auto” mode it does is switch to LSB when accessing 40m or below and USB when accessing 30m or above. That’s not very precise unless you only operated SSB. As an example, if I click a spot in the cluster for say 14.043, I would want it to automatically change to CW since USB isn’t the proper mode for that portion of the band.
There’s a way to program the TS-2000 to be more configured to what you want. I’m aware of 2 ways to program the mode based on what frequency is entered – manually and through the Kenwood ARCP-2000 which isn’t free (not to be confused with the MCP-2000 program which is free but doesn’t read/write this set of configurations). Update: I’m now aware of a 3rd programming option using a newly developed Windows program – info at the bottom of this post.
The manual programming method is described in the Kenwood TS-2000 Instruction Manual on pages 73 & 74 (or enter “page” 81 if you want to jump to it in the PDF version of the manual). The section is called Auto Mode and it describes the process for configuration which involves turning the radio on while pressing the Auto/LSB/USB button. The manual describes how to specify the frequency ranges and the mode to set to within the range.
Using ARCP-2000 is more user friendly if you happen to have the program. Even if you are going to program the radio manually, looking at the 2 screenshots below are probably helpful in illustrating the info you need to specify. Below is the default screen of what it looks like when it isn’t yet custom programmed and how it comes from the factory (click to enlarge):
As you can see in the default, if auto mode is enabled on the radio (Func + Auto) anything below 9.5MHz will be set to LSB and anything above it will be set to USB. Using the ARRL Frequency Allocation Chart (PDF), I programmed in the CW and SSB ranges for each of the bands. As an example with 40m, below 7.125MHz will be CW while above 7.125MHz will be LSB. You can see in the below screen shot (click to enlarge) a snippet of the different frequency ranges and the mode that my TS-2000 will tune to if manually entered on the radio or if sent to the radio via a program such as clicking a spot within Ham Radio Deluxe.
I did not program in the RTTY segments of the band and will just manually press the CW/FSK button if I want to go into RTTY mode. I will use the Auto Mode option when casually operating, but in a contest, I turn auto mode off and manually set the mode based on the contest. The only contest where you might normally switch around modes is a state QSO party and that’s no big deal.
Maybe the above is obvious to all the Kenwood TS-2000 users and I sort of new about it, but today was the day when I did something about it. I was just tired of changing the mode manually when I’m poking around with spots as folks are gearing up for CQ WW CW this weekend and a lot of ops are on the air before the contest working a lot of different bands/modes.
73 & good DX,
K2DSL
Quick update: I was going to post this into the Kenwood TS-2000 Yahoo Group and when I went there I see there is a very recent discussion on this as well as someone creating a Windows program to do what ARCP-2000 does. See http://wf0gm.fpage.com/ts2000automode.htm for details. I haven’t tried it but it seems to be much more user friendly then manually doing it and even if using ARCP-2000.