Well from what I read last night it was just a matter of time before this radio was made Kenwood & Icom each own 5 percent of Dstar JARA has the rest , an agreement of some kind was made many many years ago that left the responsibility of making dstar a viable thing was left to Icom well Kenwood was free to do what it wanted ,now that it's real , viable and has a following Kenwood is entering the market, reports say that the 74a is a 72a smashed together with a 51a , the APRS is all Kenwood mending and if you have worked a 72a you allready know hoe to work this , the Dstar side is pure icom UI and with a few tweaks it is a 51a , combining memories was interesting there are 1000 regular memories and 1500 Dstar memories like the never Icom rigs it will listen from spark to space with very sweet reciver and easy mars/cap molding, unlike the 72a it's not true duplex , you can be working APRS on one side and doing Dstar on the other or voice on one and digital on the other just not voice simultaneously and whatever your doing if the rig is beaconing you will lose audio for a split second , I think despite its price it's going to be a hot seller for the holidays ( I would not expect any coupons or deals to be in place) me thinks the stuff that's gonna really be moving is the 74a and the SDR HF rig ) Although I don't have any local dstar action , I think for the holiday I am gonna get one of the latest $129 dongles that decode all 3 of the big players stuff, gives you a wifi dstar Hotspot and a 440 transceiver built in to use , and this Dongle will work win or Linux, plus it does the PSB with APCO25 reception , that Radio and donglengor will make my family think I died because I'll be playing alot of radio, I also can't wait to find out what goodies are stashed in this radio with the special security code , what will that reveal ,the big three have been coming out with stuff to keep us busy and not guessing , so they could have schemed up one he'll of an "Easter egg" that nobody was looking for or expecting , there is alot of talk of another hugely expensive Radio that " I'll buy in a few years when it's a hundred bucks" somehow I think a bunch of those neah sayers are going to clamoring to get there paws on it, it's the first really special rig in many years and somehow I think the ground floor is where you want to get on , kinda like the promises that uniden has yet to fulfil and the claims of whistler "giving" away NXDN decoding on the TRX 1 & 2 someone is on the edge of some really great rigs , who pulls it off who knows .
Sent from my SM-T810 using Tapatalk
