Hi Skyler!
As I have been writing, these Chinese-made HTs can work AO-85 full-duplex. They aren't able to do that with SO-50 or LilacSat-2, due to the 2m transmitter desensing the 70cm receiver. As I also wrote last night, the Kenwood TH-D72A (not an "American" radio; it's made in Japan) does better than the KG-UV9D, but for AO-85 you could go with either radio. One advantage with the KG-UV9D is its price - less than $200 at most stores, compared with over $400 for the TH-D72A.
If you want to hear how I was hearing AO-85 with each of those radios, go back through my posts and visit my Dropbox space. Look for the MP3 files in each folder. That recording came from whatever radio I was using to work the pass. I put an audio splitter into the HT's speaker jack, and then fed audio to a small recorder and an earpiece. I wanted to have a record of what the radio heard, along with what a separate receiver (my SDR setup) heard from the satellite. You can play back those large WAV files if you download software like HDSDR, even if you don't have an SDR receiver or dongle.
For SO-50 and LilacSat-2, you could use the radio you already have to transmit to those satellites, and a KG-UV9D as the receiver, to make a full-duplex station for those two satellites. You could also program a group of memory channels for each of these satellites, but full-duplex operation is the way to go.
73!
Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/ Twitter: @WD9EWK
On Sat, Nov 28, 2015 at 10:56 AM, Skyler Fennell electricity440@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for that information.
I am looking into the woxun radios, and see the kv9d at the top of your rank.
Is this an adequate radio for full duplex satellite operation, how far does it fall behind the American radios?
73 Skyler kd0whb