Ham

[spressomon]

3 of us have decided to move to the Kenwood TM-710A including APRS. I'm going to try to find the best deal for us and will call several suppliers to inquire about better pricing/group buy potential.

If any of you are interested let me know. If I get a vendor that wants to play I'll probably post a group buy for this up on the main board assuming there's a financial incentive for the buy.

Dan

 

[1loudLX]

Oh I thought this was going to be food related. Now I'm hungry, damnit. I'd love APRS and EchoLink but I don't use my radio enough as it is to justify upgrading.

 

[hoser]

I know somebody who deals in car stereos.... I'll see if he can get these.

 

[hoser]

Nope, my Kenwood contacts can't get ham radios.

 

[spressomon]

Thanks for checking Les!

Hamvention was in Ohio this last weekend but I haven't found any info, one way or the other, regarding any new intro from Kenwood as a future replacement for the 710A. I don't want or need to go to digital right now but my motivation for knowing would be better pricing on what might be a discontinued (710A) radio.

I sent Kenwood an e-mail inquiring if they were going to intro a radio to compete with Icom 2820H and/or Yaesu FTM-350r or the upcoming release of their FTM-400D but no reply as of yet.

I'm going to contact the vendors to see if they'd be motivated by a group buy to provide additional discount.

 

[rusty_tlc]

Be sure to check with Hamcity (AKA Jun's Electronics), they usually have good prices anyway and it sounds like they are small enough to be willing to make deals.

 

[spressomon]

^ Yes...Hamcity had the best outright price ($505) but this didn't include shipping. Whereas GigaParts and AustinRadio had the 710A at $519.95 with free shipping. These prices are on their respective websites...I just need to contact them inquiring about a group buy deal.

I was hoping Kenwood would have announced a digital replacement to the 710A thereby moving prices, hopefully anyway, down on the 710A. But near as I can tell no new radio from Kenwood.

 

[spressomon]

Finally moving forward with APRS and a 710A. The Lowrance Baja 540C I have is NMEA1083 in/out compliant so with the base 710A I'll be able to use the 540C to feed the 710A the GPS signal and then use the out feed of the 710A to feed the 540C the coordinates to display on it.

There's also a guy that has coded a simple program for repeater display for the newer Lowrance units. Working on backward compatibility...but that would be the cherry atop this Sunday