Wow…Kenwood sure has improved their radios in the past few years. My new one, the TH-G71A-HP, doesn’t really have many more features than the TH-78A that I previously owned, but it is a lot more user-friendly. I got a rapid battery charger with it, so when I got the radio, I charged the battery for 1 1/2 hours, and the radio has been on and scanning channels all day since then (about 14 hours now). I haven’t transmitted much yet, only keyed up a couple repeaters, but I suspect the battery on this one will last much longer than the old one did. On my old radio, the display was split into two sides: the left was the 2 meter band, the right was the 70 centimeter band. On this new model, I don’t have to scan each band separately or switch between bands…I can scan both bands at once. Another nice thing is when I’m scanning channels or frequencies and turn the radio off, when I turn it back on, it resumes scanning. The only thing that I’d really like to see is the ability to use more characters for channel names. Right now I can only use six characters (enough for the callsign of the repeater), but seven or even eight would be nice, then I could distinguish between several repeaters with the same callsign.
My old radio did have this really cool memory game you could play on it, but I have yet to find anything like that in the new radio. The new one, like the old one, is modifiable to transmit on police frequencies and receive cellular phone frequencies (but of course, I’d never do anything like that). 🙂
I’m leaving for San Francisco on Sunday around 3:00 p.m., and if I can, I’ll update my page from out there, but I doubt I’ll have access to a decent computer in the office there. I’ll probably write a little something tomorrow night, but after then, I really doubt I’ll have anything up here ’til Thursday night, unless I’m not drop dead tired when I get in late Wednesday.