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I got a brand new Kenwood D-710G under the Christmas tree and have been exploring many of its functions. This one has me stumped:
How do I set, let's say, Band A to a frequency of 131.550 (AM) to monitor aircraft digital transmissions (ACARS)?
I cannot get either Band down into the aviation area. Please consider step by step directions as I am deep into the confusion area!
First of all, only Band A (left side) can be tuned to the aviation band; if you try to use Band B it will not work. Press the left "BAND SEL" button (volume knob). Then you should be able to use the tuning knob to tune to the frequency you want.
If it skips over the aviation band, then the first thing to check is that the aviation band is not masked. This is covered in the secondary "CD-ROM" manual, page "OTHER OP-1":
- Turn the transceiver power OFF.
- Press the left or right [BAND SEL] + Power ON.
- The band mask display appears.
- Rotate the Tuning control to select the band you want to hide (or return to normal).
- Press the Tuning control to set the selected band.
- Rotate the Tuning control to set the band to select USE or MASK.
- USE allows you to see and use the band as normal. MASK hides the band on the display.
- Press the Tuning control to set the selection.
- Press the [ESC] to exit.
(Caution: the paragraph at the beginning of the section about "hide the frequency display" has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual function being described. Evidently even Kenwood's technical writers were confused by the choice of "band" to refer both to frequency bands and what another radio might call VFOs.)
I checked that my own TM-D710G can receive 131.550 MHz as you mentioned (with the band not masked).
I never saw a viable answer here. Realize this post is a year old, hopefully it is answered somewhere.
The solution is to select band A, left side by pressing the left volume control on the right side of the display. Then press F, followed by pressing the left volume control button. I'm not sure how to do this repeatedly but what I did was press F then the volume until I hit the desired frequency band. There are other tweaks needed like frequency spacing, etc. The MCP-6A software tool is ideal for updating and setting the options.
The Jinglish in the manual is very poor for the supurb quality of the radio!
