Timz Ham Radio Page Yaesu FTM-400 / Yaesu FTM-350 / Yaesu FT-90R / DR-535 / IC-7100 / Wouxun KG-UV8E Tri-Band / Main
Kenwood TH-D72a
go to APRS & GPS Settings Page
Let me start out by mentioning how great the receive audio is on this radio. From someone that has a partial hearing loss... I really appreciate the extra steps the Kenwood engineers took to create such good fidelity from the tiny speaker. And I'm not talking about amplification level (which it has a lot), but the fidelity is so crisp & clear that I don't need to turn the volume way up to understand a received voice.
General Hints & Tips
Software InstallationIt is nice of Kenwood to offer the memory manager program for free download. Here is a link to their download page: www.kenwood.com/i/products/info/amateur/software_download.htmlI received an error when installing; claiming I had to upgrade my Windows operating system to
Net Framework 2.0 SP1. I didn't expect that, but was able to find the Microsoft site that contained the upgrade file: www.microsoft.com/download/en/confirmation.aspx?id=16614MCP-4A Memory Manager Program
Custom Startup Screen (find this option at Edit, Menu, Radio, AUX tab) : very cool to be able to customize your ham radio to this extent. Here's some things I learned about being successful with this Startup Screen option:* the image must be in BMP format
* the image must be 1 bit in color depth (aka: B&W)
* the picture size must be 120 x 48 pixels... exactly. If it's even one pixel off in size (for example 119 x 48) ... the program will not load the image, and display an error message.
Here are some BMP's I experimented with:
you can mouse over any of the pics above, left click on the image to view the pic in another browser window. Once displayed in the new browser window... right click - save picture as if you'd like to test these known-good BMP's on your TH-D72a. The first pic looks a lot better on the radio than on your computer screen. Pic #2 looks really sharp; and the third pic is of a female ham. There was no way to have the girls pic show any detail in the standard orientation (with just 48 pixels in heigth allowed). If you try this pic on your radio, hold it sideways when turning it on. Just an example of an attempt to be creative.
email Tim
