Hi Patrick,
You are the go-to guy for any Kenwood HT questions - have you owned/used all of them??? ;-)
The toggling between VFOs was not as big of an issue for me (like you say, small price for a full duplex HT), but the receiver seemed weak. I know I commented a few weeks ago about the 8800 having a weak receiver, but I think after using the G71As for so long, I got spoiled with the receiver in it.
The s-meter is also practically useless on the D7. You have to toggle back and forth between bands to see it, and it also never goes above approx. s3-s5, on a good pass. It makes it difficult, especially when a bird is quiet, to tell if you are on it or not. You need to have keen ears to tell whether you are listening to the carrier or noise.
I didn’t use the D7 for much satellite work before I went back to the G71A for receive, so I probably need to try the full duplex again and give a more accurate observation.
73!
Zack KD8KSN
-----Original Message----- From: Patrick STODDARD (WD9EWK/VA7EWK) Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 10:24 AM To: amsat-bb@amsat.org Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: 2 ht vs. 1-duplex ht
Zack,
I have the D7A (full duplex), but I don’t like the receiver sensitivity. I went back to using one THG71 for the down and the D7 for the up. The other thing I don't like about the D7 is you have to switch between back and forth between band A and B to adjust doppler. I would probably not recommend the D7 for satellite work. I have heard things about the D72.
If someone is looking for a single HT for full-duplex satellite work, I would recommend the D7 despite having to switch VFOs for Doppler adjustments. I have the TH-D72A, which works the same way as the TH-D7 regarding the need to jump between the two VFOs to adjust the receiver. It's a small nuisance, but a small price to pay for not having to deal with two radios when working full-duplex on FM satellites. I've picked up a couple of old D7s (one appears to be a TH-D7A(G), and the other may be an original TH-D7A), that I hope to get new battery packs for and make a couple of FM satellite stations when combined with Elk antennas.
Your TH-G71A is a good dual-band HT. Not capable of full-duplex operation, but worked well for me using groups of memory channels for FM satellites. The receiver was pretty good, and some would notice that I changed to a different radio from my normal radios when I used that HT.
73!
Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/
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