Kenwood TH-D74A

I acquired a new handheld, a Kenwood TH-D74A, from a seller on Craigslist this last week. I’ve been using it for about two days, and have some insights and thoughts on getting it to work with my setup. I do use APRS from time to time when I’m driving (but I don’t have my new vehicle totally set up yet – that’s probably a different post completely), and setting it up was almost like setting up my TM-D710GA; the menu options are basically the same.

One of my bigger complaints is the complete lack of coverage in the Cincinnati area right now – and this is something that I plan on addressing by building a Raspberry Pi APRS RX only PiGate (Ok, it’s really called an iGate, but, I like PiGate better). Am I going to be the type of guy who wears his HT on his belt when he’s walking downtown, with a shoulder microphone on his chest? No – but, when I’m out walking, or, enjoying the parks, I plan on bringing my new toy with me to experiment. Hopefully, I’ll figure out a way to keep my D710GA powered on when my truck isn’t off (without draining the battery of my truck) so that my D710GA can Digipeat my traffic to an APRS receiver.

My thoughts, if you’re on the fence?

It’s a really receptive tri band radio. When I hooked it up to my Spectrum Analyzer, it was dead on the dial as far as where it needs to be frequency-wise. It has D-Star (which, is a little disappointing, as I would have loved for this device to have NXDN), and it allows me to continue to use my Pi-Star to communicate with others via the Brandmeister network. The only thing that’s prohibitive is the cost, and honestly, I’m fairly cost agnostic as long as my radios work with my workflow…and this one does.

73’s

Ian