[amsat-bb] Re: Kenwood THD7AG availability

[John Mock KD6PAG]

> At dayton, here is what I heard... they can no longer get about
> a handful of parts.  The radio has been in production for 10
> years!  Of the handful of parts, they have come up with some
> substitutes for all but one of them.  There is still one tiny
> chip transistor that has no substitutes and impossible to find.
> Unless they can solve that problem, they are stuck...

That is MOST unfortunate!  It is important to operate in full-duplex
in Mode J-FM, and with the demise of the Icom IC-W32A, the Kenwood
TH-D7AG was the only HT available which had that capability. Every
other multi-band HT available commercially tries to be a scanner 
from DC-to-daylight, and that is inherently incompatable with full-
duplex operation.  I believe that the number of people who can't hear 
their own downlink has alot to do with the amount of chaos on the FM
satellites.

Please, please, PLEASE!!  AMSAT-NA and AMSAT-*, lobby the amateur radio
manufacturers to make another satellite-friendly HT!  This is important
to the future of amateur radio.

		     -- KD6PAG  (Networking Old-Timer, Satellite QRPer)