Kenwood TH-D7a

I purchased the radio because it was the ideal rig to try everything I wanted. It had packet, APRS, and of course a not so bad dual band radio. How about we go through everything in just that order. Just a warning my brain is not what it used to be thanks to the Hepatitis B vaccine so please bear with me.

Packet:
Packet was pretty good the few times we tried it. We recieving and sending was A-ok. We couldn't try it out too much since packet acivity in Chicago isn't that high and we were doing it at a relatively low power too. The radio doesn't have all the commands you're used to with regular TNCs. It also loses all the settings you put in when you turn the TNC off. It's kind of a pain in the rear but like other people have said there's no guessing as to the settings when you turn it on.

APRS:
This is what I really wanted to try. It worked great! APRS messaging is very easy. You can either use the keypad, tuning knob or a combo of both. I found that the knob was PDQ once you got the hang of it. It does have most puncuation marks too. Message length is limited to 45 characters. That's not bad for a straight APRS message but if you want to send email through the gateway it doesn't seem like much.

Hooking up the GPS reciever was easy too. My brother made a cable and off we went. We had no problems setting it up.

The voice side of things:
The radio is a true dual bander. Tuner A can have 2m frequencies while tuner B can have 2m and 440 frequencies too. We noticed that tuner B wasn't as sensitive but I suppose that's ok. The radio can pick up public service stuff too which was very helpful around here. There was a shooting a few days after I got my radio and from hearing the description of the guy the police were looking for we knew who they were talking about and we let them know where to find him.

Audio is excellent. We cranked the radio up to the max volme and there was little distortion. That surprised the heck out of us.

The rest of the story:
It sounds like a good radio but there were a few things I didn't like about. The stock antenna is junk. I don't give a rats behind what anyone says. It barely works. I couldn't hit repeaters that should have been a piece of cake and I couldn't hit digipeaters at all. I bought a Comet SMA3 and the difference was like night and day. I could actually hit things again! If you're getting the radio buy a new antenna too.

I also didn't like how the battery attaches to the radio. I don't know if any of you have seen an Icom T8 but it's like that. The battery basically snaps onto the back of the radio. I goes on like this: | | |/ *snap* || There's a tab at the bottom and a clip at the top. It doesn't feel very secure to me especially when using the belt clip which is on the battery. Buy a case for it, don't use the belt clip.

There's a size problem too. I know they had to fit all the good stuff in there but I'm still gonna complain. ;) The radio was too big to comfortably hold in my hand. I'm used to having my fingers wrap around the radio. With the D7 they barely make it up the sides.

There's also a problem with durability. I'm probably spoiled by the metal cases Icom radios have. The case on the D7 is plastic. It very well could be durable but it won't look too nice with the resulting scratches. I know I wouldn't mind paying more for metal.

Ok I guess that's about it. If you have any questions about the radio at all please don't hesitate to ask! I'm positive I forgot some stuff so let the questions fly!