New Ham rig on the way.

[Herr Walther]

Ordered my first decent Ham radio today. Called up R&L Electronics out of Cincinnati and ordered the Kenwood TH-D74A tri-band D-Star rig.

[Wayne]

I was just in there last week. My girlfriend lives right down the street.
Let me know if you want me to look at anything they have.

[Herr Walther]

Cool. Thanks Wayne!

[Herr Walther]

I received my new Kenwood Th-D74A on Wednesday. I was up and running in 10 minutes with minimal operating manual reference. The radio is very intuitive to use and program. It uses a graphical menu system and then submenus and sub- submenus to make changes and adjustments.

This has the same features as a base station model in the size of a larger HT. I was hitting APRS repeaters ten minutes after setting it up. I'm still waiting on my D-Star approval from the organization to get into their repeaters.

It has 1000 channels, the worldwide repeater database loaded, automatic WX monitoring with alert, scanning capability in selected banks, bank linking, or all at once, free programming software, on-board EQ adjustment, volume balance between the dual watch, dual receive functions, HF receive down to 100Hz, SD memory slot, common USB connectivity, and the list goes on and on. It is what I've always wanted in a transceiver/receiver. If you want one radio that will literally do-it-all, this is the one to buy.

And the display is second to nothing on the current market in an HT and can be read in full sunlight:

[Herr Walther]

I'm getting a lot of enjoyment out of this HT. I really have no current use for APRS, but it's fun to tinker with. I get area wide messages from automatic beacon transmissions. Sometimes they have a message sometimes they just ping the repeater or 'digipeater' as it's called.

I'm going to be installing a new 5/8 wave ground plane within the next week if my buddy can come up with the LMR400 coax he says he can get. It'll be up at around the 30' level which should be good for repeaters up to 40 miles on a good day.

I've hit repeaters 25 miles away with this hand held already on only the 5 watts it transmits and the Hams on the other end say the transmission sounds good with a bare amount of background static. I can't wait to see how far it will get with a 30' antenna.